Technology For Virtual Reality, Autonomous Vehicles, Wearables, Quantum Communications, And More At SPIE Optics And Photonics

Largest optical sciences meeting in North America adds three conferences, Hot Topics session

A new Technology Hot Topics session at SPIE Optics and Photonics 2017 in San Diego, California, this August will feature high-level speakers on quantum devices, graphene electronic tattoo sensors, augmented and virtual reality, solar fuels, and autonomous vehicles.

SPIE Optics and Photonics, the largest multidisciplinary optical sciences meeting in North America, will run 6-10 August in the San Diego Convention Center.

The event’s 3,300 technical presentations will be complemented by approximately 34 courses and workshops, the SPIE Career Center Job Fair, a three-day exhibition with 180 companies supplying optics and photonics, an industry program, and numerous networking opportunities.

Topics span a broad range of light-based technologies — nanophotonics, plasmonics, metamaterials, x-ray optics, AR/VR, CubeSats, perovskite photovoltaics, sensing technologies for food and water security, OLEDs and LEDs, renewable energy sources, and other optical engineering topics.

New this year are three conferences: Quantum Photonic Devices, Quantum Nanophotonics, and Thermal Radiation Management for Energy Applications.

Technology Hot Topics speakers demonstrating how optics and photonics drive innovation within their industries will include:

• Tanja Cuk, University of California, Berkeley, on solar fuels
• Nanshu Lu, University of Texas at Austin, on wearables/implantables: graphene electronic tattoo sensors
• Scott McEldowney, Oculus, on augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR)
• Cesare Soci, Nanyang Technological University, on quantum devices
• James Watzin, NASA Mars Exploration Program, on autonomous vehicles.

Plenary sessions are organized in several conference tracks and feature some of the top speakers in their fields:

• Nanoscience and Engineering
  • Martin Wegener, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
  • Javier García de Abajo, ICFO — Institut de Ciències Fotòniques
  • Deji Akinwande, University of Texas at Austin
• Optics and Photonics for Sustainable Energy
  • Charles Gay, U.S. Dept. of Energy
  • Eicke Weber, Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS) and University of California, Berkeley
  • Ralph Romero, Black and Veatch
• Organic Photonics and Electronics
  • Larry Dalton, University of Washington
  • Naomi Halas, Rice University
  • Nam-Gyu Park, Sungkyunkwan University
  • Michael Grätzel, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
• Signal, Image, and Data Processing
  • Avideh Zakhor, University of California, Berkeley
• Optical Engineering
  • Leo Baldwin, Amazon.com, Inc.
  • Steven Kahn, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and SLAC National Accelerator Lab
  • Remote Sensing
  • Thomas Pagano, Jet Propulsion Lab.

The 69 conferences are organized along four topical themes:

• Nanoscience and Engineering
• Organic Photonics and Electronics
• Optics and Photonics for Sustainable Energy
• Optical Engineering and Applications.

Among conference presentations:

• In a keynote presentation in the Spintronics conference, Michael Farle, Universität Duisburg-Essen, will describe a future in which food is used to activate specific immune reactions in a human body, based on an external noninvasive magnetic stimulus. The approach involves using magnetic nanoparticles that are functionalized to be biocompatible, environmentally stable, recyclable, self-healing, and low-cost (10357-82).
• Hot topics in quantum mechanics will be covered in an invited talk by Peter Nordlander, Rice University, in the Metamaterials, Metadevices, and Metasystems conference. Quantum mechanical effects have pronounced influence on the physical properties of plasmons, and Nordlander will survey a variety of those (10343-83).
• Pantazis Mouroulis, Jet Propulsion Lab, will review in an invited talk in the Lens Design and Optical Engineering conference the design principles and techniques behind imaging spectrometer design leading to high spectroscopic data fidelity. His talk will cover optical design, tolerancing and alignment, stray light, and methods of assessment and verification and feature examples from deployed systems and recent results on the use of freeform surfaces (10375-3).
• Zhenan Bao, Stanford University, and her group will present four papers on their work in the synthesis of functional organic and polymer materials, organic electronic device design and fabrication, and applications development for organic electronics, including flexible electronic skin (10363-1, 10363-12, 10365-9, 10365-19). The papers appear in conferences on Organic, Hybrid, and Perovskite Photovoltaics, and Organic Field-Effect Transistors.

About SPIE
SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, an educational not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based science, engineering, and technology. The Society serves nearly 264,000 constituents from approximately 166 countries, offering conferences and their published proceedings, continuing education, books, journals, and the SPIE Digital Library. In 2016, SPIE provided $4M in support of education and outreach programs. For more information, visit www.spie.org.