2023 Symposia – Optica Foundation Challenge - Environment

Use Photonics. Change the World: Environment Symposium

With nearly 8 billion people on earth, problems with polluted air and water, global warming, plastic in the oceans and energy consumption represent unprecedented challenges to our society and planet. A cleaner, safer future is needed, and various technologies, including optical-based solutions, are urgently needed to address and alleviate the continued growth of these problems. Optics and photonics can provide unique, effective means to monitor our world, provide more energy-efficient devices and solve environmental challenges.

The 2022 winners of the Optica Foundation Challenge in the environment category will present their progress along with two special keynotes.

Keynote Speakers

• 

  Gilberto Brambilla

  University of Southampton, UK

  Sensing in the oceans

  Climate change and the broader human intervention is causing extreme and rapid changes in our oceans. While land across the various continents can be constantly monitored, humans have just scratched the surface of knowledge and understanding under the water surface. University of Southampton and the National Oceanographic Centre @ Southampton have been developing improved optical sensing technologies to improve our understanding of oceans and of geodynamics. We will explore new approaches and both their opportunities and challenges for the future of undersea environments.

• 

  Mikhail Kats

  University of Wisconsin - Madison, UK

  Engineering, understanding, and measuring thermal radiation

  The energy flow from the sun to the earth, and from the earth to outer space, is a consequence of thermal radiation: hotter objects emitting electromagnetic waves toward colder objects. Over the last two decades, there has been a flurry of activity to better-understand, engineer, and measure thermal radiation. We will discuss our research across these areas, including the demonstration of temperature-dependent emissivity, high-speed control of thermal radiation, water condensation and thermoregulation, and new measurement techniques.

Challenge Winners

Dismas Choge, University of Eldoret, Kenya
Ashim Dhakal, Phutung Research Institute, Nepal
Michela Florinda Picardi, ICFO – the Institute of Photonics Sciences, Spain
Wanvisa Talataisong, Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand

Schedule

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