Plenary Speakers
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Professor Clara Saraceno - Frontiers in Optics Plenary Speaker
Head Chair of Photonics and Ultrafast Laser Science, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Terahertz light is becoming a ubiquitous tool in many scientific fields and is also increasingly deployed in industrial settings, in inspection, non destructive testing and other security applications. Terahertz wave "see through" optically opaque objects, and can provide rich spectroscopic information. In science, they can excite and probe a plethora of low energy phenomena in condensed matter. While these systems have seen tremendous progress in last decades, efficient, and lab-based THz generation methods combining ultra-broad broad bandwidth and high dynamic range (e.g., as provided by high THz average power and correspondingly high repetition rate) remain very rare, and most measurements remain too slow, which limits their wide applicability. In recent years, an emerging research area has gained speed: increase the average power pf broadband THz sources using state-of-the-art, high-average power ultrafast Yb-gain based lasers providing multi-100-W to kilowatt average-power levels as excitation sources. Recent results have allowed to reach power levels in the THz domain in the multi-ten to multi-hundred milliwatts in different repetition rate regions – which was previously restricted to accelerator -type THz sources. This progress opens the door to a multiplicity of new and old research areas to be re-visited. In this talk, we review recent progress in the generation of high-average power THz-TDS. We will present the state-of-the-art of high-power ultrafast laser sources with potential for driving THz sources, current technological challenges in scaling THz average power, and applications areas that could potentially benefit from these novel sources.
Clara Saraceno was born in Argentina in 1983. She completed a dual degree program in France and earned her doctorate in physics from ETH Zurich in 2012. After a postdoctoral stay at ETH Zurich and University of Neuchatel she received the Sofja Kovalevskaja Prize from the AvH (2015) and started the Photonics and Ultrafast Laser Science Group as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Ruhr University Bochum. In 2018, she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant followed in 2024 by a Consolidator Grant. She is a Fellow of Optica since 2022. Prof. Saraceno is now a full professor at RUB and her current research interest spans from Laser technology to Terahertz technology, laser-plasma interactions among others.
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Professor Alexander Gaeta - Laser Science Plenary Speaker
David M. Rickey Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University, USA, United States
To Be Announced
Alexander Gaeta received his PhD in Optics from the University of Rochester in 1991. He is the David M. Rickey Professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University. He was on the faculty of the School of Applied and Engineering at Cornell University from 1992 to 2015 and served as its Director from 2012 to 2014. He recently co-founded Xscape Photonics, Inc. and is currently the CEO.
Gaeta has made pioneering contributions to the fields of quantum and nonlinear photonics. These include key advances to nonlinear wave propagation that provided critical understanding of self-focusing and filamentation of ultrashort laser pulses, the generation of slow light via stimulated scattering and nonlinear processes in photonic crystal fibers. He and his group have also performed seminal research in nonlinear nanophotonics that enabled photonic-chip dispersion engineering, optical frequency combs, generation of quantum states of light and all-optical signal processing. He holds 10 patents, has published more than 300 papers in quantum and nonlinear optics and is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher. He served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of Optica and was the Chair of the Optica Publications Council from 2021 - 2022. He is a Fellow of Optica, APS and IEEE. He is the recipient of the Charles H. Townes Medal and the Stephen D. Fantone Distinguished Service Award.
Visionary Speakers
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R.J. Dwayne Miller
University of Toronto, Canada
The posed quintessential question is not cast as an origins of life issue but rather directed towards understanding the underlying physics by which chemistry breathes life into otherwise inanimate matter. The real issue is how chemistry scales in complexity up to the level of biological systems. The light matter interactions being exploited to achieve this Moon Shot for Biology will be discussed as part of a proposal to launch a global initiative to map the cell.
R. J. Dwayne Miller has published over 380 papers, notably contributions leading to the development of ultrabright electron sources to light up atomic motions, achieving the long-held goal to watch atomic motions during the defining moments of chemistry. This research directly observed the collapse of innumerable possible nuclear pathways to reduced dimensions defined by reaction modes, directly resolving how chemistry scales in complexity from few atoms up to biological processes. His research accomplishments have been recognized with the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, Sloan Fellowship, Guggenheim, Dreyfus, Humboldt, Polanyi Award, Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Rutherford Medal, Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC) Medal, ACS E. Bright Wilson Award, APS Earl K Plyler Prize, European Physical Society Award in Laser Science for “Achieving the Fundamental Limit to Min. Invasive Surgery with Complete Biodiagnostics”. He is also a strong advocate for science promotion earning the RSC McNeil Medal and the ACS Helen M. Free Award for founding Science Rendezvous, the largest event of its kind, involving >6000 volunteers annually to inspire the next generation. He is a Fellow of Optica, the RSC, RSChem, FCIC and was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society 2023.