The Applied Industrial Optics Meeting: Day 1 in Summary
Julia Majors, PhD, OSA Member, Avo Photonics
Turan Erdogan’s keynote session opened this year’s Applied Industrial Optics (AIO) Topical Meeting with over a decade of insight from two companies he took part in founding – Semrock and Plymoth Grating Laboratories. Erdogan shared lessons learned from the two company’s contrasting challenges and how to find balance in market opportunities and competition by focusing goals.
Caption: OSA Fellow, Turan Erdogan of Plymouth Grating Laboratory discusses two companies evolutions from start-up to mid-life
Credit: OSA Communications
In the morning’s “Close to Home” session, a theme of light scattering shone through a variety of advanced photonic solutions. First, Simone Bonanomi of CoeLux presented his company’s artificial sky technology and how their window installations use electric field controlled scattering to provide variable, dynamic sun- and moon-mimicking light. Alexander Bergman discussed light scattering from atmospheric particles as it pertains to aerosol sensing. His work at The University of Technology in Graz, Austria hopes to shrink current table-top sized sensor technology down to chip-based sensors as small as a fingernail with innovative uses of waveguides.
Hans-Peter Loock of Queens University in Ontario presented his work with high dynamic range fiber strain sensing, designing photonic guitar pickups, and more recent work developing hand-held ultrasound pickup devices. Finally, Mohiudeen Azhar reviewed the work he does at Siemens Healthcare Pvt Ltd in India developing fluorescence microscopy and optical detection systems without the need for filters, instead using LEDs as excitation sources and prisms to spectrally resolve response signals.
The afternoon’s “Out of This World” session centered on photonics demands from space-based and wide-reach applications, beginning with John Tower from SRI International. Tower reviewed recent space hardened CMOS detector achievements in low-light imaging as well as the promising potential of PMOS detectors, whose hole (and not charge) based photocarrier signals offer reduced noise. Nicholas Sawruk of Fibertek shared with the audience some of the unique challenges to space and military applications such as NASA’s ICESat2 system – you can’t repair space based lasers after they’re launched!
Vijaysekhar Jayaraman’s talk offered a closer look at the imaging, metrology, and spectroscopy possibilities of MEMS-VCSELs, monolithic and impressively tunable surface emitting lasers. The fast tuning abilities of these devices have already demonstrated impressive swept source coherence tomography images of the eye. The second half of the session highlighted the fascinating needs of quantum technologies, like optical clocks and atom interferometry, and the work John Macarthur does at the Fraunhofer Center for Applied Photonics in developing laser diode technologies for these applications. Finally, Min Seok Kim outlined his wavelength-switchable fiber Bragg grating ring laser.
Day 1 of Applied Industrial Optics wrapped up with an engaging panel, “Small Business, Big Optics” hosted by Garret Cole, where panel members Ben Schrag (NSF), Quenton Bonds (NASA Goddard), Ron Shiri (NASA), and Holly Ricks-Laskowski (US Naval Research Laboratory) facilitated informative discussion about various support opportunities available to small business and technology development.
