Abbie Watnik

Uncontrolled environments – either natural or manmade – impact how light propagates and is detected. Various scenarios such as atmospheric turbulence, laser threats, camouflage, turbid or scattering conditions (underwater, fog, sand, etc.), all affect light propagation, detection and ultimately our ability to sense and image the world around us. In this talk, I will provide an overview of research at the US Naval Research Laboratory that utilize active imaging approaches to provide successful image reconstructions when the environment for collecting photons limits conventional approaches to imaging.

Manijeh Razeghi

The material covered in this talk will be a unique blend of the most important topics related to semiconductor materials and related Quantum Devices  largely as a result of  my  own  focused background   that has been molded by  my  career-long efforts to understand the structure of atoms and semiconductor material systems that make a practical impact.

Juergen Czarske

Light has the potential to recognize the origins of diseases, enabling to prevent them, or to cure them early and gently. The early diagnosis is the key to improve the survival rate and cure rate of patients. However, conventional biopsy often takes several hours to a few days for the surgeon to know the results of the diagnosis. Optical histopathology offers real-time intraoperative diagnosis without tissue removal. Novel optical engineering approaches for minimally invasive fiber endoscopy using fluorescence light are presented.

Gordon Wetzstein

In this talk, we explore hybrid optical-digital strategies to computational imaging that outsource parts of the algorithm into the optical domain. Using such a co-design of optics and image processing, we can design application-domain-specific cameras or compute parts of a convolutional neural network in optics.

Dave Hagan

Our understanding of nonlinear optical materials characterization has progressed sufficiently over the years to allow a reliable picture of the physical processes leading to the nonlinear optical properties of a material. This is largely thanks to the development of reliable, complimentary characterization methods. I will provide an overview of our techniques in nonlinear refraction and absorption characterization. Additionally, I will describe how nonlinear interactions can be strongly enhanced when two very different wavelengths are used. In addition to the obvious applications of this effect, I will describe applications in diverse applications as infrared detection and tunable mid-IR sources. Finally, I will present some rather amazing results in so-called “epsilon-near-zero” materials.