World of Photonics Congress Plenary Talks 2025

Christine Silberhorn is full professor at Paderborn University and spokesperson of the Institute for Photonic Quantum Systems (PhoQS). She is best known for her work on the development of novel integrated-optical quantum devices and optical systems that lay the foundations for future quantum computers, in quantum communication and quantum metrology. She completed her PhD in 2002 at the University of Erlangen and worked as post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford for two years. In 2005, she became Max Planck Research Group Leader in Erlangen, until 2010. Her research has been awarded by several prizes, most prominently she received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-prize in 2011, and in 2017 she was awarded with a European Research Council Consolidator Grant. She is Fellow of Optica and of the Max Planck School of Photonics (MPSP).

Dr. Aydogan Ozcan is the Chancellor’s Professor and the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Innovation at UCLA and an HHMI Professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also the Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute. Dr. Ozcan is elected a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and holds >85 issued/granted patents in microscopy, holography, computational imaging, sensing, mobile diagnostics, nonlinear optics and fiber-optics, and is also the author of one book and the co-author of >1200 peer-reviewed publications in leading scientific journals/conferences.

Chu Lun Alex Leung is Associate Professor in Advanced Manufacturing (2023 - present), IPG Photonics / Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellow in Synchrotron calibratEd lAser pRocessing teCHnologies (SEARCH), and Co-director of the Materials, Structure, and Manufacturing group at Harwell, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London. His work has been recognised by large facilities worldwide, including the Diamond Light Source (DLS Annual Review 2018), European Synchrotron Radiation Facilities (ESRF), STFC Central laser facilities (CLF), to name but a few. Prior to that, Leung worked at University of Manchester and UCL as a post-doctoral research associate on 'Development of multi-modal imaging techniques to study additive manufacturing'. Before starting his research career, Leung worked for the British Steel (formerly known as Tata Steel Europe) as a Technical Graduate Trainee (2010 - 2011) and a New Product Development Project Manager (2011 - 2013). Besides his industrial experience, he earned a Design London fellowship (2009 - 2011) funded by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art and worked on a product prototype using directable light technology. He received a First Class Honour degree in Aerospace Materials (MEng) and David West prize (2010) from the Department of Materials, Imperial College London.

Topic:

“Additive manufacturing for sustainable solutions in hydraulics”

Barbara Previtali is Full Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Politecnico di Milano (Italy) since 2016, responsible of SITEC- Laboratory for Laser Applications since 2009 and co-chair of the AddMe_Lab, the laboratory for metal additive processes of the Department of Mechanical Engineering since 2015. She is member of the Board of Department of Mechanical Engineering as delegate of the project Departments of Excellence LIS4.0 - LIghtweight and Smart structure for Industry 4.0. She is member of the board of Mechanical Engineering phD Programme Department of Mechanical Engineering – Politecnico di Milano.
She is responsible of PromozioneL@ser, the section of Associazione Italiana Tecnologie Meccaniche (AITeM) that brings together users and experts in laser manufacturing from the Italian industry and academia. She is also the co-founder of the Laser Safety School, the Italian platform for education, research, and outreach in the laser safety, supported by 10 major industrial sponsors along with all the members from the academic institutions of PromozioneL@ser. Moreover, she is the Academic Responsible of Group 2-Industrial Manufacturing in COrdinamento Ricerca Innovazione Fotonica Italia (CORIFI), the Italian Photonics Platform that mirrors Photonics21, the European Technology Platform for photonics. She is a member of the Italian Association for Manufacturing - AITeM, Photonics21 and Laser Institute of America (LIA).

Topic:

“Additive manufacturing for sustainable solutions in hydraulics”

Kishan Dholakia is a Professor and Director of the Centre of Light for Life at the University of Adelaide. He is also a Professor at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

His team addresses various fundamental and interdisciplinary topics using structured (shaped) light fields, especially for imaging, manipulation and measurement.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Optica, SPIE and the Institute of Physics (IOP, UK). He has won several national and international awards, including the Optica R.W. Wood Prize (2016), the IOP Thomas Young Medal and Prize (2017), the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award (2018) and the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (2021). His work in imaging and manipulation has seen successful industry translation, with instruments used in over ten countries worldwide.

Topic:

“Fluorescence lifetime imaging of NAD(P)H and FAD to monitor immune cell metabolism and function“

Irene Georgakoudi is a Professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College and co-director of the Translational Engineering in Cancer program at the Dartmouth Cancer Center. She studied Physics at Dartmouth, Biophysics at the University of Rochester and was introduced to label-free, optical diagnostics at MIT. She continued to pursue this line of research as an independent investigator at Tufts University, after being an Instructor at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Her work focuses on the development and application of imaging modalities that exploit endogenous light scattering and fluorescence contrast to characterize quantitatively tissue function and morphology to improve understanding, diagnosis and monitoring of human diseases. She is a fellow of the American Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Optica and SPIE.

Topic:

"Holotomography and artificial intelligence: label-free 3D imaging, classification, and inference of live cells and organoids"

Wolfgang Osten received the MSc/Diploma in Physics from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in 1979. From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the Institute of Mechanics in Berlin working in the field of experimental stress analysis and optical metrology. In 1983 he received the PhD degree from the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg for his thesis in the field of holographic interferometry.

From 1984 to 1991 he was employed at the Central Institute of Cybernetics and Information Processes ZKI in Berlin making investigations in digital image processing and machine vision. Between 1988 and 1991 he was heading the Institute for Digital Image Processing at the ZKI. In 1991 he joined the Bremen Institute of Applied Beam Technology (BIAS) to establish and to direct the Department Optical 3D-Metrology till 2002. From September 2002 till October 2018 he has been a full professor at the University of Stuttgart and director of the Institute for Applied Optics. From 2006 till 2010 he was the vice rector for research and technology transfer of the Stuttgart University.

His research work is focused on new concepts for industrial inspection and metrology by combining modern principles of optical metrology, sensor technology and digital image processing. Special attention is directed to the development of resolution enhanced technologies for the investigation of micro and nano structures.

Wolfgang Osten is fellow of OSA, SPIE, EOS, SEM, IAAM, and senior member of IEEE. He is a Honorary Professor of the Shenzhen University, China, a Honorary Doctor of the University of Technology of Ilmenau, Germany, the 2011 recipient of the Dennis Gabor Award of the The International Society for Optics and Photonics SPIE, the 2018 recipient of the Rudolf Kingslake Medal of the SPIE, the 2019 recipient of the Chandra Vikram Award of the SPIE, and the 2019 recipient of the Emmeth Leith Medal of the Optical Society OSA.

Alberto Diaspro is a biophysicist, Full Professor of Physics at the University of Genoa and Director of Research in Nanoscopy at IIT. He has published over 500 scientific articles. He mainly works in optical nanoscopy and nanoscale biophysics. He received the Emily M. Gray Award from the Biophysical Society and the award for scientific communication from the Italian Physical Society. In 2022, he received the international Gregorio Weber Award for excellence in studies concerning fluorescence. In 2024, he was awarded the honour of Knight of the Order "of Merit of the Italian Republic" and the Enrico Fermi Prize for Physics from the SIF "for original contributions to the development and application of optical microscopy and the crucial impact on cellular and molecular biophysics". He also received the Sant'Eligio Special Prize from Federpreziosi and the "Beppe Pericu" Prize from the Società di Letture e Conversazioni Scientifiche of Genoa for scientific activity and dissemination in 2024.

Ferenc Krausz graduated in electrical engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and completed his studies in theoretical physics at the Eötvös Loránd University in 1985. He earned his doctorate in laser physics from the Technische Universität Wien (1991), where he became professor in 1998. In 2003-2004, he was appointed director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching and chair of experimental physics – laser physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and established “Attoworld” at these two sites (attoworld.de).

In a series of experiments performed between 2001 and 2004 his team succeeded in producing and measuring isolated attosecond pulses of light and applying them to observe sub-atomic motions. Attoworld has been fostering the proliferation of the emerging field, attosecond science, and – since 2015 – exploring its utility for probing human health. For his contributions to establishing the field of Attosecond Science, Ferenc Krausz has been awarded the King-Faisal International Prize for Science (2013), the Wolf-Prize in Physics (2022), the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2023) and the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Anne L’Huillier is a Swedish/French researcher in attosecond science. During the first part of her career, she worked at the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, in Saclay, France, first as a PhD student until 1986, then as a permanent researcher until 1995. She was postdoc at Chalmers Institute of Technology, Gothenburg. Sweden in 1986, and at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA in 1988. In 1995, she moved to Lund University, Sweden and became full professor in 1997. Her research, both theoretical and experimental, is centered around high-order harmonic generation in gases and its applications, in particular in attosecond science. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 together with Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz for “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.