All Things Photonics

Western New York (specifically, the city of Rochester) is a globally recognized hub for optics, photonics, and imaging innovation. From titans Kodak and Xerox to an industry’s reemergence from a global pandemic, New York Photonics’ Executive Director Thomas Battley discusses how one industry (specifically, one cluster) blends contributions from industry, academia, and government to drive economic growth and scientific progress.

Greg Quarles, former OSA chief scientific officer and current CEO of Applied Energetics, takes us beyond the defense sector and the combatting of threats along the electromagnetic spectrum, outlining current applications in directed energy. Tom Nugent, CTO and co-founder of PowerLight Technologies, talks optical power beaming - a technology that is closer than you think.

2019 President of The Optical Society and Fulbright Scholar Ursula Gibson details her latest work with novel core optical fibers and their function in expanding applications spanning metrology, optical communication, and optoelectronics. Nick Harris, founder and CEO of supercomputing company Lightmatter, talks about silicon-driven advances in all-optical computing and Lightmatter’s photonic computing platform.

Frequency combs have revolutionized time and frequency metrology, making stops along the way to key developments in optical clocks, and, as it turns out, broadband spectroscopy. In a conversation that veers from interferometry to holography, and optoelectronics to solid-state lasing, Nathalie Picque from Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics shares insights about her latest research. UCLA's Aydogan Ozcan is back for the second part of a conversation about "Terahertz pulse shaping using diffractive surfaces."

The latest in quantum computing and quantum optics is our focus, as Dirk Englund from MIT's Quantum Photonics Laboratory shares his insights on the latest in materials processing, PICS, photonics entrepreneurship, and more. UCLA's Aydogan Ozcan talks about his latest work, "Terahertz pulse shaping using diffractive surfaces," in Part One of a two-part segment.

Jess Wade from Imperial College London’s Blackett Laboratory kicks off Season 3 with expert insights on OLEDs, chiral materials, and the not-so-clear-cut relationship between science and equity. Through the lens of SPIE’s very first Diversity Outreach Award winner, listeners will enjoy a candid conversation on topics ranging from polymer conjugation to breaking biases in STEM and beyond.

Chunlei Guo, from the High-Intensity Femtosecond Laser Laboratory in the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, discusses his work in laser processing, leading to the discovery of highly functionalized materials. Guo's research, including with black and colored metals, is addressing societal issues including global access to clean water. Chrys Panayiotou, executive director of LASER-TEC, joins us to talk about developing a highly skilled optics and photonics workforce.

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All Things Photonics is produced by Photonics Media and airs biweekly, on Tuesdays. Find links to the stories mentioned in the episode on our website, www.photonics.com/podcast.

Quantum information processing has arrived at the cutting edge. Ian Walmsley, elected fellow of the esteemed Royal Society and provost of Imperial College London, guides us through the narrative of the field — from information processing and computing, to the evolution of science education and industry. Manos Anyfantakis, from the University of Luxembourg’s Experimental Soft Matter Physics group, shares his team’s latest breakthrough: achieving structural colors, with applications in biobased sensing and dyeing.

Vice president of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Anita Mahadevan-Jansen shares her journey in and throughout biomedical imaging and biophotonics, including the discovery of infrared neural stimulation - and working alongside her husband. Garrett Cole, from Thorlabs Crystalline Solutions, stops by to chat about limiting quantum noise in laser beams, high-precision optics, and his presentation in the upcoming Photonics Spectra Conference.

Andreas Tuennermann, head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, discusses his work with fiber lasers, quantum applications, and manufacturing in a global pandemic. Alejandro Manjavacas, from the Theoretical Photonics Group at the University of New Mexico, stops by with insights into two distinctly different projects: one with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one with Los Alamos National Laboratory.