As a part of the "Dr. Anwarul Abedin Lecture Series", a regular development initiative of the American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), the Faculty of Engineering (FE) at AIUB organized a webinar titled "Second-order nonlinear optical observation of photocatalysts and other functional materials" on Saturday, October 09, 2021, in Dhaka from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM. The event was moderated by Dr. Md. Ehasanul Haque (Senior Assistant Professor, Dept. of IPE, FE). The webinar was held on Zoom online platform and also live-streamed on the AIUB's Facebook page. 

The webinar was inaugurated with a welcome address by Dr. ABM Siddique Hossain (Professor and Dean, Faculty of Engineering, AIUB). He started by paying gratitude to Dr Anwarul Abedin, AIUB's Founder-Chairman, who contributed significantly to the university's development. He then presented a quick overview of the history of AIUB's journey for excellence in outcome-based education and applauded the progress done by Japanese researchers in various research fields.

The esteemed guest speaker of this webinar was prominent researcher Dr. Goro Mizutani (Professor & Director of Library, JAIST). The speaker explained the concept of second-order nonlinear optical phenomena and listed the main points of the talk. After a brief review of basic optics related definitions such as EM waves, Maxwell's equation, Snell's law of reflection, dielectric constant and constant refractive index, he moved on to basic nonlinear optics. Next, he discussed the nonlinear optical study of a photocatalyst by discussing the SHG spectroscopy of TiO₂ and the broken symmetry of the stable 110 surfaces of the rutile TiO2 crystal structure. In the following section, Prof. Mizutani described the SHG microscopy process using their work involving spider silk where SHG of the orbweb and the dragline exhibited an SHG enhancement effect with the elongation of the silk thread. Lastly, he discussed the applications of SFG spectroscopy and microscopy performed at their lab, the former being studied in an alignment film of LCD that is rubbed and the latter in a Chara Fibrosa plant sample.

Once the talk ended, the moderator announced the start of a question-answer session where Prof. Mizutani enthusiastically responded to the queries raised by the audience. Dr. Md. Abdur Rahman (Professor and Associate Dean, Faculty of Engineering) provided the closing remarks by thanking Prof. Mizutani for the informative session and for explaining a heavily scientific topic in a simple manner. After offering a digital Certificate of Appreciation as a token of gratitude for sharing his valuable time and insight, Prof. Rahman extended an invitation to Prof. Mizutani for future events organized by AIUB. Mr. Nafiz Ahmed Chisty (Associate Professor and Head In-Charge, Dept. of EEE) co-hosted the event. The event was graced by the presence of Dr. Mohammad Abdul Mannan (Professor and Director, Faculty of Engineering), Mr. Md. Saniat Rahman Zishan (Associate Professor and Head, Dept. of CoE) along with other faculty members and students from the Faculty of Engineering.