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

A big day full of plenary talks, symposiums and social events

by Shamsul Arafin


Many greetings from Tucson!
 
The day started with an amazing plenary talk by Prof. Jeff Kimble from CALTECH, USA where he presented a new exciting possibility, tthe so-called alligator waveguide, which is nothing but photonic crystal waveguide that integrates nanophotonics with atomic systems. Hence, the single atoms can be successfully trapped inside the waveguide. He also mentioned how much efforts he and his graduate students had to make into creating such alligator waveguide. In his presentation, he then pointed out that such new paradigms emerge by combining atomic physics with one- and two-dimensional photonic crystal structures formed from planar dielectrics over a configurable platform for engineering strong light-matter coupling, which is beyond traditional settings of cavity QED and waveguides.

One of the most incredibly exciting events of today was the Symposium on Translational Biophotonics - Focus on Cancer, which became full of energetic conference attendees. In this session, four outstanding speakers gave their invited talks on how to utilize optics to diagnose, treat and monitor cancer. The first talk given by Prof. Mark Dewhirst from Duke University, USA addressed that due to its non-toxicity, repeatability and cost-effectiveness, optical technology is the most attractive one to image the dynamics of tumor hypoxia.  At the end of his talk, he introduced a chart, showing a comparison among the currently available imaging methods, where it is clear that optical imaging technique supersede any other technologies in all respects. This impressive talk was followed by the presentation made by Prof. Darren Roblyer from Boston Univ., USA, which was also on solid tumor metastasis (Metastasis is the spread of a cancer or disease from one organ or part to another not directly connected with it). Prof. Roblyer mentioned in his presentation that almost all cancer deaths occur from metastases. He then described that how he and his group are developing and testing a range of optical technologies to monitor patients at unprecedented timepoints during breast cancer treatment. The third talk by Dr. Charles Lin from Massachusetts General Hospital, USA on cancer therapy from single cell tracking was impressive and informative, too.



Last but not least, the special event on Meeting the Editors of the well-known OSA journals brought in a lot of conference participants and gave them the opportunity to talk to the journal editors in person. I was lucky enough to get the chance to talk to Prof. Govind Agarwal, Editor-in-Chief for the OSA journal Advances in Optics and Photonics, and shared some of my suggestions with him.
 
Check back tomorrow to hear about more exciting highlights of FiO/LS 2014.

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 by Shamsul Arafin