Jürgen Jahns

Jürgen Jahns is Professor of Micro- and Nanophotonics at the Fernuniversität in Hagen. He received his PhD in physics from University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. His thesis advisor was Prof. Adolf Lohmann, one of the pioneers of information optics. Previously he worked with Siemens AG on sensors for automation and on digital optical communication systems and AT&T Bell Laboratories as a member of the technical staff in the Optical Computing Research Department.

His research areas have included microoptics and nanooptics, optical interconnection, optical information processing and computing. During his time in industry, novel approaches for optical array-based techniques emerged such as laser beam splitting, multistage optical interconnection, and the use of lithographically fabricated diffractive optics. In particular, Jahns came up with the idea of building integrated and miniaturized optical systems in a planar configuration by folding the optical setup into a transparent substrate. This concept has been widely adopted over recent years for neural optical computing systems and for the optics of VR glasses.

Jahns has (co-)authored more than 100 journal articles and several textbooks on microoptics and photonics. He served as President of the European Optical Society from 2015 – 2017. He is a Fellow of Optica and SPIE, a member of EOS and DGaO, and winner of the Emmett N. Leith Medal.