• Technical Conference:  23 – 26 September 2024
  • Science + Industry Showcase:   24 – 25 September 2024
  • Colorado Convention Center, Denver, Colorado, USA

Plenary Talks in FiO/LS 2014: Combination of Applied and Fundamental Research

by Shamsul Arafin


Keynote Talks during the plenary session by the internationally-recognized spotlight speakers are one of the most important events in a technical conference. Like every year, FiO/LS 2014 will be offering two informative and inspiring research talks to its conference attendees.

Prof. Rebecca Richards-Kortum from Rice University, USA will give the first plenary talk on “Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Low-Resource Settings”. Personally, I am really looking forward to attending this presentation because this talk will feature applied-research efforts made to ensure the survival of the humanity as-a-whole. In particular, this talk will describe efforts to develop appropriate high­performance, low-cost biophotonics technologies to meet health needs in low-resource settings.

Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Low-Resource Settings
An inexpensive device that is powerful enough to let doctors easily distinguish cancerous cells from healthy cells simply by viewing the LCD monitor on the back of the camera- developed by Rice University and University of Texas researchers

Half of the world’s children especially in low- and middle-income countries live on less than $2/day and do not have access to basic medical technologies. Most diagnoses in these regions are mainly based on clinical signs and symptoms. Often the corresponding diseases of such diagnoses start in places without any signs or symptoms until the diseases have grown quite large. However, there is good news. Dr. Richards-Kortum will bring such good news at FiO/LS 2014 where she will present how her research group has developed imaging systems to enable better screening for oral, esophageal, and cervical cancer and their precursors at the point-of-care which will certainly fulfill the demand of these patients. In addition to this, you will get to hear how her group has integrated nanotechnology and microfabrication to develop novel and cost-effective sensors to detect infectious diseases, including cryptosporidium, malaria, and HIV at the point­of-care.

Another exciting plenary talk will be given by Jeff Kimble from Caltech, USA. He will present his fascinating fundamental research results which are primarily focused on “Atom-Light Interactions in Photonic Crystals”. Very recently, Prof. Kimble’s group published a revolutionary paper on the same topic in Nature Communications, in which new paradigms for strong atom-photon interactions have been described. The development of a novel integrated optical circuit with a photonic crystal capable of both localizing and interfacing atoms with guided photons has mainly been reported in this paper. His talk in the plenary session is expected to show how such groundbreaking results have been successfully made. It will also be very interesting to see what other new results Prof. Kimble brings to FiO/LS 2014 My hope is that he also addresses his ongoing research pursued in his group including tuning the photonic bandgaps to near an atomic resonance in order to induce long-range atom–atom interaction.

Thanks to FiO/LS 2014, - a platform has been organized - to showcase these intriguing research results- from two different research areas. So, don’t miss it out!

Photo credit: http://kortum.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=353

Posted: 3 Sep 2014 by Shamsul Arafin