24 – 27 September 2017
Boulder, Colorado, USA
The week's networking events started with a
reception on Sunday and included events hosted
by Alpine Research Optics and the
National Center for Atmospheric Research. |
An annual best paper award was named in
honor of longtime Laser Damage chair and
SPIE Past President MJ Soileau, Research and
Commercialization vice president at UCF. |
A reception at the NCAR facility provided an opportunity for a group photo of attendees. |
SPIE Laser Damage participants enjoyed a successful week of invited speakers and research reports, provding what conference chair Vitaly Gruzdev characterized as "a brilliant service to the international high-power laser community." At 150, registered attendance was up by 20%, and technical presentations were up by 10% over last year.
Content focused on fundamental mechanisms of laser damage; materials and measurements; thin films; and surfaces, mirrors, and contamination.
Mini-symposium presentations sparked intense discussions following each presentation and continuing through the breaks. Devoted to an overview of frontiers of ultrafast-laser science including lasers, devices, fundamental ultrafast laser-solid interactions, and applications, the mini-symposium featured eight invited speakers and three regular talks, with speakers from the USA, Germany, France, and Japan. Invited speakers included top-ranked researchers in several areas of ultrafast-laser science.
Opening-day events on Sunday included a well-attended tutorial and welcome reception, and extended poster sessions on Monday and Tuesday were extremely interactive during the viewing times.
Next year, the conference will celebrate its 50th year, with a retrospective as well as a look forward to the future in laser-induced damage technologies and applications.
Three full days of presentations engaged conference room audiences. |
Kyle Kafka, at right, 2017 Alexander Glass
Best Oral Presentation award winner with
conference chair Joseph Menapace
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Christian Muehlig, at right, 2017 Arthur Guenther
Best Poster Presentation award winner with
conference chair Joseph Menapace
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Arnaud Courairon
Ecole Polytechnique |
Reluca Negres
Lawrence Livermore National Lab |
Vladislav Yakovlev
Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik |
Bruce MacLeod
TelAztec LLC |
Christopher Carr
Lawrence Livermore National Lab |
Greg Exarhos
Pacific Northwest National Lab |
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From left, Laser Damage 2017 chairs Joseph Menapace (Lawrence Livermore National Lab),
Detlev Ristau (Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V.), Vitaly Gruzdev (University of Missouri, Columbia),
Gregory Exarhos (Pacific Northwest National Lab), and MJ Soileau (University of Central Florida)
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