Conference Prizes

The Optica Foundation Student Paper Competition 

The conference recognizes the next generation of scientists through a student presentation competition. To qualify for an award, the paper must have been presented by an undergraduate or graduate student of an educational institution of collegiate grade.

The papers submitted to the competition were reviewed during the standard Technical Program Committee (TPC) review process and up to 8 finalists were selected. After the papers are presented, the Program Committee members will make their selections based on content quality, value to the technical community of interest and the students' presentation skills.

Congratulations to the Finalists!

Bernard Gorzkowski, Uniwersytet Warszawski Wydzial Fizyki, USA
Wednesday, June 17, 2026, 10:30 - 10:45 AM
Single-Photon Wavefront Sensing with Shack-Hartmann Sensor and Fast Time-Stamping TimePix3 Camera

Jan-Wilke Henke, MPI Multidisziplinare Naturwissenschaft, University of Göttingen, Germany
Monday, June 15, 2026  2:00 - 2:15 PM
Electron-heralded Generation of Single Photons

Jonas Lammers Universitat Paderborn, Institute for Photonic Quantum Systems (PhoQS), German
Thursday, June 18, 2026, 4:30 - 4:45 PM
Resource Efficient Universal Photonic Processor Based on Time-multiplexed Hybrid Architecture

Bartosz Niewelt, Uniwersytet Warszawski Centrum Nowych Technologii, Uniwersytet Warszawski Wydzial Fizyki, Poland
Monday, June 15, 2026  11:00 - 11:15 AM
Extending the Lifetime of Collective Rydberg Excitations via Spatial ac-Stark Modulation

Myriam Rihani, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich, Switzerland
Wednesday, June 17, 2026, 11:00 - 11:15 AM
High Operating Temperature Integrated Single Photon Detectors on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate
 

Peter Tirler, Leopold Franzens Universität Innsbruck, Austria
Monday, June 15, 2026, 2:45 - 3:00 PM
Device-Independent Quantum Memory Certification on a Trapped-Ion Quantum Computer

Minyan Wang, University of Science and Technology of China, China
Monday, June 15, 2026  11:15 - 11:30 AM
Long-Distance Free-Space Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution towards Satellite-based Quantum Network

Yan-Cheng Wei, Harvard University, USA
Wednesday, June 17, 2026, 11:15 - 11:30 AM
Demonstration of Non-local Optical Interferometry in a Quantum Network

Optica Emerging Economy Paper Prize  

Individuals from emerging economies can opt in during the submission process of any Optica meeting to be considered for special recognition of their presentation.  Honorees will be featured on the meetings website and in an upcoming issue of the OPN Journal.  Highly scored presenters from emerging economies will be selected for the recognition.

Congratulations to the Winners!

Joy Ghosh, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India
Thursday, June 18, 2026, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Approximate Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill State Encoding in Pulsed Optomechanical Regime

Urmimala Dewan, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India
Thursday, June 18, 2026, 2:00 - 4:00 PM
An Entanglement Swapping Scheme for Generation of Bipartite Magnonic Cat States