Shahriar Mostufa The final year of Bachelor’s degree is one of the toughest years for an undergraduate student. Apart from regular study pressure, one has to think about the life choices that will impact his or her future. Luckily for me, I knew where my interest lies and it is in research. I am Shahriar Mostufa. I am pursuing my undergraduate from Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET), Bangladesh. My research interest is focused on optics and I have already published in several international journals. This wonderful journey would not have been possible without the contribution of my honorable teachers and my co-authors whom I thank heftily. Here I must extend my gratitude to the ‘Abartan’ team for their exclusive course on ‘Research Paper Development’ instructed by Nihal Ahmed Shoumik.
Upon looking back, I see that my initiation in research actually began with Nihal Sir. The rudimentary aspects of writing a paper, for example: how to give citations, details about journals, MS word formatting templates and most importantly, how to go through a paper initially, all were instructed by him. I believe this course to be very helpful for beginners or UG-level students who aspire to become researchers in the future. With this jump start, as of now, I have three publications associated with my name in the field of optics.
My First Publication –
My first publication was based on surface plasmon resonance-based optical sensor (https://doi.org/10.1364/OSAC.433633). In this paper, we have shown the detection of hemoglobin level in blood and detection of diabetics in urine by measuring the glucose level. We detected these biological components using the refractive index property of optical-based sensor and the analysis was done using finite element method (FEM) based software.
My Second Publication –
My second publication was also on optical sensor based on whispering gallery mode (https://doi.org/10.1364/OSAC.431883). In this paper, we have proposed a novel biosensing method using numerical analysis and have shown the detection of cancer cells and diabetics tear cells.
My Third Publication –
My third paper titled ‘Design and analysis of a position chirped metamaterial photonic crystal array for the confinement of light pulses’ was about the confinement of light in the line defect photonic crystal array with metamaterial chirping (https://doi.org/10.1088/2040-8986/ac2164). This has been published in one of the Q1 journals (Journal of Optics IOP IF 2.516). The results of this paper were thought-provoking as we have shown a novel to trap light in the dielectric of the metamaterial. The existence of quantum well in the metamaterial dielectric has been explained using a photonic bandgap. Due to the wave-vector compensation and the existence of quantum well in the metamaterial dielectric, the light is trapped in a line defect chirped metamaterial-based photonic crystal array. Furthermore, this paper also described the cloaking property of metamaterial and the confinements in the bending defects structure.
My realization from this experience is that the starting stages of publishing a journal or a paper are the most difficult stages in research. Because behind all these successful publications, there are tons of rejections and revisions which will all seem fruitful in the end. I would suggest to not lose hope as this is very normal at the initial stage of research publications. So, keep learning and improving as you go further into the realm of research.
Here I can’t conclude without thanking the CEO of ‘Shabash Fakibaj’, Wasiq Ameen for reaching out to me and giving me this brilliant platform to express my experiences. Again, I would like to convey my thankfulness to everyone from Abartan and Shabash Fakibaj team for creating these remarkable platforms which not only augment research interest in young graduates but also, are extremely helpful for higher studies aspirants. I would be delighted to collaborate and assist on any of the projects or courses in the future if asked. Best of wishes to you all!
Thank you,
Shahriar Mostufa
A young researcher from RUET