The highlights of Europe’s largest photonics conference

• Address by Professor Reinhard Genzel, the 2020 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics

• Five sub-conferences covering all aspects of photonics research

• Industry insights during the LASER World of PHOTONICS Industry Days

This year' s World of Photonics Congress will be a strictly virtual event when it is held from June 20 to 25, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Five scientific conferences and a industrial program will be conducted un-der the congress' umbrella.

The partners of the World of Photonics Congress, the scientific societies, will use their own digital platforms for the conferences. The platform of Messe München will serve as the interface of all conferences and stream events live. Participants can also use the platform’s networking function to reach out to fellow research-ers. They will be able to visit the digital showrooms of sponsors and attend an exclusive industry event – the LASER World of PHOTONICS Industry Days. This latter event may be attended free of charge by any interested individual. The top-ics will range from market figures and applications of photonics and quantum technology to lab tours. Only registered attendees will have access to the plat-forms of the individual conferences.

The following events will be held under the umbrella of the World of Photonics Congress:

• CLEO®/Europe-EQEC – 2021 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Op-tics/Europe – European Quantum Electronics Virtual Conferences – or-ganized by the European Physical Society (EPS)

• Digital Optical Technologies – organized by SPIE Europe

• ECBO – European Conferences on Biomedical Optics – organized by The Optical Society (OSA).

• LiM – Lasers in Manufacturing – organized by Wissenschaftliche Gesell-schaft Lasertechnik e.V. (WLT)

• Optical Metrology – organized by SPIE Europe

• World of Photonics Stage with current issues in the photonics industry – organized by Messe München

The online version of the World of Photonics Congress will be opened on Mon-day, June 21, 2021 on the World of Photonics stage by the 2020 Nobel Prize winner for Physics: Professor Reinhard Genzel, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, will discuss the 40-year journey that he has taken with colleagues to prove Einstein’s general theory of relativity by conducting astrophysical measurements of the Milky Way. Reinhard Genzel, An-drea Ghez and Roger Penrose received the Nobel Prize for their research into black holes. During this work, the group led by Prof. Genzel used extremely pre-cise methods to observe brilliant explosions of gas in the vicinity of a black hole and the gravitation shift of a passing star that was triggered by this monster of mass, among other things.

The plenary speakers

• The plenary speakers at CLEO®/Europe-EQEC will be Professor Robert Boyd of the University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa and Professor Nirit Dudovich of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Prof. Boyd conducts research into quantum nonlinear optics and quan-tum photonics. He is one of the founders of the quantum imaging re-search, a field in which the quantum properties of light are used to in-crease the resolution of optical images. Prof. Dudovich and her team fo-cus on attosecond science and conduct research into such areas as pho-toionization spectroscopy and photoelectron holography.

• Another highlight will be the plenary address at the Conference on Digital Optical Technologies: Hiroki Kikuchi, Deputy Senior General Manager of Sony Group Corporation R&D Centers, will take conference attendees on a trip into the virtual world of tomorrow (“Digital Optical Photonics to Inspire Kando (emotion) 3R: Reality, Real-time and Remote Technolo-gies”).

• Professor Vasilis Ntziachristos, the Director of the Chair of Biological Imaging at the Technical University of Munich, will report on the latest high-performance optical and optoacoustic processes in biological imag-ing. In his opening address to the ECBO, he will describe the progress being made in multi-spectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) and mesoscopy (MSOM). The advances will facilitate the visualization of ana-tomical, physiological and molecular biomarkers.

• LiM – Lasers in Manufacturing – will open its online sessions with insights into additive manufacturing and materials processing using ultrashort la-ser pulses. Professor Gleb Turichin of the St. Petersburg State Poly-technic University is a globally recognized specialist in the theory and practical application of laser, hybrid and additive technologies. He will talk about the “Trends and prospects of additive manufacturing of large metal parts.” The second plenary address will be given by Dr. Jörg Krüger of the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (German institute for materials testing). He will talk about X-rays that are emitted during materials processing using ultrashort laser pulses.

• The intriguing title of the plenary address of the Optical Metrology Confer-ence is: “Optical sociology – how organizational culture impacts ad-vances in optical metrology.” Dr. Peter de Groot, the Executive Director of R&D at Zygo Corporation, will explore cultural influences on the use of optical measuring processes.

And the winner is…

Europe’s largest conference on the science of light will honor outstanding re-search once again in 2021:

• The Herbert Walther Award created in 2008 will be presented by the OSA and the German Physics Society. The award recognizes exceptional work done in quantum optics and nuclear physics as well as leadership qualities in the international scientific community. The award will be pre-sented this year to Professor Wolfgang Peter Schleich, the Head of the Institute for Quantum Physics at the University of Ulm. Prof. Schleich is considered to be a pioneer in quantum optics research.

• The WLT Award and the Bernard J. Couillaud Award will also be pre-sented during the conference. The Bernard J. Couillaud Award, which comes with a cash prize of $25,500, was re-initiated by the OSA Founda-tion and the company Coherent to advance projects conducted by young researchers in the area of ultrashort pulse lasers.

The awards will be presented virtually on the World of Photonics Stage.

More information: www.photonics-congress.com