SPIE DSS

Two technical programs, commercialization workshops, high-level speakers from industry, and collocated meetings of such organizations as the Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS) are bringing the business side of commercial and defense sensing to SPIE DSS in a big way this year.

Held 5-9 May in Baltimore, MD (USA), SPIE DSS 2014 will also offer new conferences in the newly established Sensing Technology + Applications (STA) symposium in recognition of the burgeoning field of sensing, especially those with photonics-based capabilities, for health, industry, automotive, and environmental applications.

The STA symposium debuts this year alongside the long-established SPIE Defense + Security (DS) and the 500-company DSS Expo to help drive the commercialization of optical sensing technologies and expand development opportunities for dual-use applications.

Stephen Auvil, senior vice president of technology transfer and commercialization at Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO), will moderate the first commercialization workshop in the Baltimore Convention Center on Tuesday to show prospective entrepreneurs how new products make their way out of universities and federal labs.

Divided into three sessions in the exhibition hall, the workshop will cover the steps of taking technology from the lab to the market and end with a panel of entrepreneurs sharing their experiences.

Joseph X. Montemarano, executive director of the Mid-InfraRed Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE) Engineering Research Center at Princeton University, will lead another industry session on Wednesday with representatives from US government labs, the venture-capital community, and industry. The experts will discuss technology commercialization for early-stage defense and homeland security applications, with an emphasis on mid-IR technologies.

The Wednesday session also includes a technology showcase where entrepreneurs with new, small companies will discuss and demonstrate their market-ready technologies.

The two workshops are free to exhibition and conference attendees.

Since relocating to Baltimore in 2012, SPIE DSS has offered a cost-effective opportunity for government scientists, researchers, and engineers in the Washington, DC, area to access mission-critical information and meet with commercial suppliers to develop solutions to problems.

This year DEPS is holding its advanced high-power laser conferences at DSS, and the Pennsylvania State University’s Electro-Optics Alliance (EOA) will hold its annual meeting during the week, further enhancing the cost-effectiveness of attending.

While the IR Technology and Applications Conference will be celebrating its 40th year at SPIE DSS, several new technical conferences will be introduced at STA and DS, including those covering:

• Sensors for extreme, harsh environments and robotics

• Image-sensing technologies, materials, devices, systems, and applications

• Fiber sensing for oil and gas

• Information fusion for smart cities

• Spectral-imaging sensor technologies

Overall, some 2300 presentations in 58 conferences will cover the latest on IR, laser, spectroscopic, and other photonics technologies for displays, imaging, energy harvesting, oil and gas exploration, food safety, and other applications.

The plenary presentations will feature Troy E. Meink, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for Space (USA), Ludger Overmeyer of Leibniz University Hannover (Germany), and William Ruh of GE Global Software (USA).

Kerry Scarlott, an attorney at Goulston and Storrs, will lead two sessions on international trade regulations and legal best practices.

Technical events include a workshop on the night vision integrated performance model (NV-IPM) developed by the US Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate and panels on trusted systems in defense, optical-metrology trends, and open architecture (OA) open business mode (OBM) systems.

Other panel discussions will cover subjects such as information fusion in contested environments; generalized point-cloud and 3D site models; and strategic vision security and defense.

• The Fellows Luncheon Monday 5 May will feature SPIE Fellow Sivalingam Sivananthan (University of Illinois at Chicago) speaking on photovoltaic materials.

• The DSS Expo, featuring workshops, product tutorials, and other industry events, will run from Tuesday 6 May to Thursday 8 May.

• Defense industry companies will discuss job opportunities at the DSS Job Fair Tuesday 6 May through Wednesday 7 May.

• Lunch with the Experts on Tuesday 6 May offers students the opportunity to meet with defense, security, and sensing experts for optics and photonics career advice.

• At the DSS banquet, Wednesday 7 May, David Honey of the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence will receive the DSS Lifetime Achievement Award.

• Half- and full-day courses will include current approaches in lasers and applications, sensors, imaging, IR systems, and optomechanical engineering.

Symposium chair for SPIE DSS is David Whelan of Strategic Innovation, Phantom Works, and Boeing Defense, Space, and Security (USA). Symposium co-chairs are Nils R. Sandell, Jr. of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for DS and Wolfgang Schade of Clausthal University of Technology and Fraunhofer Heinrich Heinz Institute (Germany) for STA.

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