SPIE Photonics Europe shines light on photonics markets, novel research
SPIE Professional R&D Highlights
SPIE Photonics Europe in April served up a daylong program of executive briefings on commercialization opportunities and challenges of photonics technologies as well as some 1200 presentations and technical reports on the latest in silicon photonics, nanophotonics, neurophotonics, biophotonics, 3D printing, hyperspectral imaging, and many other photonics technologies.
The weeklong event in Brussels also hosted the Photonics Innovation Village as part of an 80-company exhibition and featured talks by representatives of the European Commission’s Photonics Unit, Horizon 2020, and from the chair of the International Year of Light 2015 (IYL2015) initiative.
Among the awards that were presented were the SPIE Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award to Brian Wilson of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Technical Institute at University of Toronto (Canada) who gave a talk on emerging nanotechnologies for improvements in endoscopy, and the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award to Pramod Rastogi (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in diffractive wavefront technologies.
image for SPIE Photonics Europe
In addition, SPIE student members won 11 of 18 Best Student Paper Awards at Photonics Europe, and six research teams with new photonics applications and products received cash prizes in the Photonics Innovation Village competition. The Photonics Innovation Village was organized by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and is aimed at encouraging the transfer of optics and photonics R&D into new and useful products.
The top prize in the category of “Best Innovation by an Individual Researcher” went to Josep Carreras from LEDMOTIVE Technologies in Spain, for “Ledmotive®: A light engine with full spectral control.”
SPIE student member Gary Stevens and his UK team earned a first-place prize for “Best Innovation by a Multilateral Project, Organisation or Company” for MINERVA, their project for “Mid- to near-IR spectroscopy for improved medical diagnostics.”
Winners each received €1500, and first and second runners-up received €500 each.