SPIE President-Elect Bob Lieberman was among a group of optical sensing experts who were tutorial speakers at the Advanced Study Course on Optical Sensors (ASCOS) in Porto, Portugal, in July.
The weeklong event for graduate and post-doctoral students offered training in optochemical sensors, nanotechnology and the fundamentals of biosensor arrays, which have practical applications in environmental monitoring and biodefense, system integration and commercial sensors.
The biennial event also served as a networking platform for the young optics and photonics scientists and more than a dozen distinguished tutors who included Lieberman, president of Lumoptix (USA) and a leading authority on biological, physical and chemical sensors and
- ASCOS 2015 chairman and SPIE Member Pedro Jorge of INESC Technology and Science at Universidade do Porto where the course was held;
- SPIE Fellow Francesco Baldini, senior scientist at Istituto di Fisica Applicata Nello Carrara, Italy, and chairman of the ASCOS series;
- SPIE Fellow Frances Ligler from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA); and
- SPIE Fellow Jiri Homola of the Institute of Photonics and Electronics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Homola is one of four chairs of SPIE Europe Optics + Optoelectronics 2015 in Prague, and he cochaired, along with Baldini and Lieberman, the optical sensors conference there in April.
The week at ASCOS included a visit by Lieberman to the SPIE Student Chapter at the university; a celebration of the International Year of Light, and a "Point of Care Challenge," in which teams of students offered their designs for quickly and inexpensively detecting the presence of biofilm (biologically active agents that coat the surface of a wound) in real time. A group of seven students from universities across Europe won the challenge with an optical biosensor design that employed a smartphone, fluorescent dyes and optical filters.
Lieberman (center) with members of the SPIE Student Chapter in Porto.
Winners of the "Point of Care Challenge," from left: Chiara Berrettoni (Italy); Maria Laura Ermini (Italy); Christoph Staudinger (Austria); Jose Ángel de la Torre González (Spain); Filipa Sequeira (Portugal); Caroline Kelly (Ireland); and Maciej Trzaskowski (Poland).
More information: http://ascos.org/
