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Incubator Meetings

Optica Incubator Meetings

The Optica Incubator Program was created to provide unique and focused experiences, providing researchers, engineers and business leaders in niche fields with a valuable opportunity to meet and discuss advances, challenges and opportunities regarding their research. Optica Incubators:

  • Target emerging topics and fields that do not have the critical mass needed to support an Optica topical meeting structure.
  • Function to further the interest and support of promising topic areas, assessing the broader implications of the topic for future research and application.
  • Explore possibilities for greater inclusion and propagation of the topic into peer-reviewed topical meeting and/or congresses or conferences.
  • Encourage extensive formal and informal discussion while establishing a sense of community among participants.
  • Offer a valuable means of disseminating information and ideas in a way that cannot be achieved through the usual channels of communication—publications and presentations at large scientific meetings.

2025 Incubators

Incubator on Next-Gen Fiber Sensing: How to Exploit Telecom Infrastructure?
05 - 07 February 2025
Optica Global Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA

Hosts:
Emanuele Virgillito, Politecnico di Torino
Ettore Biondi, California Institute of Technology

Incubator on Cryogenic Integrated Photonics for Classical and Quantum Systems
10 - 12 September 2025
Optica Global Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA

Hosts:
Paolo Pintus, University of Cagliari
Galan Moody, University of California
Mo Soltani, RTX BBN Technologies

Incubator on Optical Implementations of Neural Networks
17 - 19 September 2025
Optica Global Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA

Hosts: 
Demetri Psaltis, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Logan Wright, Yale University
Fei Xia, University of California, Irvine

Incubator on Petahertz Electronics
12 - 14 November 2025
Optica Global Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA

Hosts:
P. Donnie Keathley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Christian Heide, University of Central Florida
Matthias Kling, Stanford University

Incubator on Quantum Network Systems Research
03 - 05 December 2025
Optica Global Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA

Hosts:
Dan Kilper
, CONNECT, Trinity College Dublin
Inder Monga, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Anuj Agrawal, CONNECT, Trinity College Dublin
Wenji Wu, ESnet

View past incubator meetings.

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