• Question: What is it about lasers that made you want to work with them, and do you think you understood the full potential of lasers before you started working with them?

    Asked by Missy to Stef, Guido on 12 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by Lauren, neha, Ellie.
    • Photo: Mariastefania De Vido

      Mariastefania De Vido answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Hello!

      I decided I wanted to work with lasers while I was attending my second year at University because I realised that they can be applied to many interesting fields, like medicine, energy, materials science, particle physics and so on…

      Indeed, I can hardly think of another human invention which is so flexible. You can find lasers in treatment centres to detect and cure illnesses, they can be used to carry huge amounts of data for telecommunications, they are used to read information stored on CDs and DVDs and much more… 🙂

      I definitely did not understand the full potential of lasers before I started working with them and I am still learning about new possible ways of using them. 😉

    • Photo: Guido Bolognesi

      Guido Bolognesi answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Hello!

      That is a very interesting question.

      Honestly, I had no idea about lasers when I started working with them.

      I graduated in mechanical engineering and I was initially looking for a job as a mechanical engineer. The subject of my dissertation was robotics, so nothing to do with lasers.

      After few job interviews, I changed my mind and I wanted to do research instead of working as an engineer.

      However, my research interests relied on the mechanics of liquids and gases and it happened that lasers are a great tool for such studies. In my case, laser can be used to move objects (or probes) within a liquid or a gas sample in order to study the property of the sample. I have also used lasers to
      illuminate and visualize objects which flow in a liquid to study again the property of the liquid.

      So I discovered lasers and theirs potential when I started my research, definitely not before.
      By the way, I am still discovering today the great potential of such a tool as there is still a lot to learn!!

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