Prague, Munich Host Key Meetings
Some of the top researchers and industry representatives working in high-power laser energy, petawatt photonics, x-ray optics, metamaterials, optical metrology, biomedical spectroscopy, optoelectronics, and related fields will gather in Prague and Munich this spring for networking and idea exchange in a series of important technical conferences organized by SPIE.
SPIE Optics and Optoelectronics and SPIE Mictrotechnologies will be held the week of 18 April, co-located at the Prague Congress Centre in the Czech Republic.
SPIE Optics and Optoelectronics, 18-21 April, will have 15 technical conferences, with a strong track on ultrafast lasers; a special workshop on the proposed European High-Power Laser Energy Research facility (HiPER); a two-day exhibition of the latest product innovations in optics and optoelectronics; and plenary speakers from the HiPER project, the photonics unit at the European Commission, and the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the United States.
More than 550 presenters will report advances in the field and exchange information about challenges and opportunities for photonics in Europe.
A two-day workshop will feature and report on three years of design work and experiments on the HiPER project, a collaboration of 26 partners in 10 countries who are developing the route to commercially viable power production from laser-based fusion.
An overview of the impacts that microtechnologies have on smart sensors, wireless communication systems, biomedical systems, actuators, and integrated photonics will be discussed during 250 presentations at SPIE Microtechnologies 18-20 April.
Three speakers at a plenary session 18 April will cover the requirements and applications for intra-aircraft communications, supply chain technologies, and wireless sensor networks.
Speakers include Achim Loock of AIRBUS (Germany), Alexander Pflaum of the Fraunhofer Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services (Germany), and Jean-Dominique Decotignie of the Centre Suisse l'Electronique et de Microtechnique (Switzerland).
New research in optical-measurement technologies, including those dedicated to preserving works of art and architecture, will be presented at SPIE Optical Metrology 23-26 May in Munich where SPIE/OSA European Conferences on Biomedical Optics and Laser World of Photonics will also be held.
Conference tracks at the International Conference Centre Munich will cover metrology topics such as surface examination and analysis, luminescence imaging, structure and material analyses, 3D topography and volume image tomography, and new methods and applications for the study, preservation, conservation, and restoration of cultural artifacts and archaeological sites.
SPIE Europe and Technology Transfer Initiative are also organizing an "Industry Meets Academia" workshop during the week to address cooperation and collaboration between industry and universities on intellectual property, technology evaluation, and contract and negotiation strategies.
The European Conferences on Biomedical Optics occurring 22-26 May have become the largest such event in Europe for researchers, scientists, engineers, and clinicians who are developing solutions to problems in biomedical science and medicine.
The biennial meeting, jointly sponsored by SPIE and OSA in cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Lasermedizin, will have seven conferences in Munich addressing medical laser applications, laser-tissue interactions, and advanced techniques for OCT, CT, microscopy, spectroscopy, and other optical imaging.
The meeting spans the gap between basic research and instrumentation engineering, and clinical translation research and mature clinical trials.
Plenary talks by Mary-Ann Mycek (Univ. of Michigan) and Wolfgang Drexler (Technical Univ. of Vienna) will cover new work in two technologies with the promise of increasing cancer survival rates, by allowing clinicians to more accurately distinguish between healthy and diseased tissues.
Two joint sessions -- on biomedical optics and advanced biophotonics for sensing and medical imaging -- have been organized with the European Conferences on Lasers and Electro-Optics, also held with Laser World of Photonics.
The sessions will be highlighted by prominent speakers from both communities, with a tutorial given by James Fujimoto (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on optical coherence tomography (OCT). An imaging modality that generates cross-sectional and 3D images of tissue pathology, OCT has clinical applications ranging from ophthalmology to cardiology.
Toptica will sponsor two awards for the best student papers presented at the event.
Accepted papers for ECBO and Optical Metrology will be published in the SPIE Digital Library as soon as approved after the meeting, and in print volumes and digital collections.
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