Click here to view the current attendee list (as of 20 September 2022).

Speakers:

	Jens Limpert Fraunhofer IOF	Jie Qiao Associate Professor, Carlson Center for Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology                  LinkedIn Profile	Jim Kafka Fellow and CTO, Spectra-Physics Lasers, MKS Instruments, Inc. LinkedIn Profile	Andrea Lovera Chief Technology Officer, FEMTOprint LinkedIn Profile	Raul Garcia Blazquez CEO, Microrelleus LinkedIn Profile

Biographies: 
 

Raúl García Blázquez 

Industrial Engineer at Politechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Raúl complemented his academic training in the New York University and Iese.
From his professional beginnings Raúl was specialized in high quality industrial engraving and micro milling applied on mold and tool. Nowadays, apart from the general managing of Microrelleus SL, he is in charge of the adaptation and application of new technologies (femtosecond and nanosecond lasers in 5 axis), collaborating with R&D and design departments of their customers: final product manufacturers, mold makers, plastic injectors or technology centers of different markets like lighting, packaging, perfumery, automotive industry or pharmaceutical industry among others.

Jim Kafka

Jim Kafka attended the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, where he obtained a B.S. and a Ph.D. in Optics, studying with Conger Gabel and Gerard Mourou, the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1983, Kafka started as a Senior Scientist at Spectra-Physics Lasers, where he has held a series of positions, including Chief Technology Officer. He designed several of the company’s most significant products, including the Tsunami, the first commercial ultrafast Ti: sapphire laser, the Millennia X, the first commercial 10 W solid-state green laser, and the InSight, the first broadly tunable ultrafast source for microscopy. Kafka has received a number of recognitions, including Spectra-Physics Fellow, MKS Fellow, and Optica Fellow. He has 45 United States patents, more than 30 publications in refereed journals and has made more than 40 presentations at major technical conferences. Kafka has also served the professional community though Optica in a number of positions, including journal editor, technical group chair, awards committees, conference organizing committees, CLEO program chair, general chair and steering committee, and the Optica Board of Directors.  He is currently a candidate for the Optica 2023 Vice President.

Jens Limpert

Jens Limpert received his M.S. in 1999 and Ph.D. in Physics from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in 2003. His research interests include high power fiber lasers in the pulsed and continuous-wave regime, in the near-infrared and visible spectral range. After an one-year postdoc position at the University of Bordeaux, France, where he extended his research interests to high intensity lasers and nonlinear optics, he returned to Jena and is currently leading the Laser Development at the Fraunhofer IOF Jena and at the Institute of Applied Physics (University Jena). He is author or co-author of more than 400 peer-reviewed journal papers in the field of laser physics and applications of lasers. His research activities have been awarded with the WLT-Award in 2006, an ERC starting grant in 2009, an ERC consolidator grant in 2013 and an ERC Advanced Grant in 2019. Jens Limpert is founder of the Active Fiber Systems GmbH a spin-off from the University Jena and the Fraunhofer-IOF Jena.  At the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF), he is a member of the directorate and responsible for the business unit on light sources and lasers.

Andrea Lovera

Andrea Lovera received a MS in Micro- and Nanotechnologies for Integrated Systems in 2009. From 2010 to 2014 he did a PhD in the Photonics domain at EPFL, where he gained experience in laser-matter interaction and nanofabrication. In 2014, Andrea joined the newly incorporated startup FEMTOprint as Field Engineering team of FEMTOprint and as CTO, is supervising production and machine development groups.

Jie Qiao

Jie Qiao is currently an Associate Professor in the Carlson Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology. She leads the Advanced Optical Fabrication, Instrumentation & Metrology Laboratory where her team of graduate students and postdocs work on ultrafast-lasers-enabled advanced photonics/optics / waveguide laser fabrication, wavefront sensing, and spatial-temporal control of laser beams. Dr. Qiao has authored over 100 journal and conference publications. She has provided over 20 invited talks at international conferences on the topics of femtosecond laser-based optical fabrication. Dr. Qiao was an associate editor for Optics Express from 2018 to 2021, and the Program Chair for the 2022 and 2023 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, Applications and Technology Program. Prior to joining RIT, she was a laser system scientist at the Department -of-Energy-funded Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the University of Rochester from 2005 to 2013. She led the demonstration of the world’s first 1.5-meter coherently-phased-grating pulse compressor for petawatt lasers. Dr. Qiao has worked on various innovative photonics devices, optical imaging, and metrology systems, for two photonic startups and one optics company. Dr. Qiao earned her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and her M.S. in Precision Instruments and Fine Mechanics from Tsinghua University. She has an M.B.A in entrepreneurship, strategy, finance, and marketing from the Simon Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester.