In the Afterglow of EOSAM 2025

On Friday, 31 october 2025

In the Afterglow of EOSAM 2025: Highlights from the Conference

The European Optical Society Annual Meeting, EOSAM 2025, was held in the charming and picturesque city of Delft, The Netherlands, from August 24-28, with 440 participants. The event took place at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and was organized in close collaboration with the university. EOS and TU Delft worked together to ensure a meeting of the highest quality, showcasing novel research results across various fields of optics.

The conference was chaired by General Chairs Dr. Omar El Gawhary and Prof. Stefan Witte from TU Delft, along with Program Chairs Prof. Emiliano Descrovi, President of EOS, and Prof. Ignacio Moreno, President-Elect of EOS. The EOS Office, led by Executive Director Elina Koistinen, handled the coordination and organization of the event.

A Comprehensive and Engaging Program

The agenda was packed with nine Topical Meetings and three Focused Sessions on selected trending topics that piqued the interest of conference attendees.

This year’s Topical Meetings included:

This year’s Focused Session topics included:

The EOSAM week covered over 250 oral presentations, and around 80 poster presentations. As in previous EOSAM conferences, in addition to the conference program, EOS provided an additional benefit to all registered attendees in the form of tutorials covering TOM and Focused session topics. 12 tutorial speakers took the stage on Monday before the official opening of the conference: Sylvain Gigan, Julius Muschaweck, Ignacio Moreno, Martijn Anthonissen, Hugo Cramer, Simon Horsley, James Blakesley, Qingfeng LI, Sara Nocentini, Shima Rajabali, Sanli Faez, and Richard Bowman. A special thank you to our exceptional speakers who delivered outstanding sessions and shared their expertise with the EOSAM attendees.

In addition, EOSAM hosted the Face2Phase meeting, EU Project Sessions, a Podium Discussion on HR Strategies for the Growing Photonics Industry, and a session promoting international cooperation and knowledge-sharing between Chinese and European researchers, which was organized together with the Chinese Optical Society, an EOS MoU Partner.

The program also included an outstanding lineup of plenary speakers, each bringing fresh perspectives and groundbreaking research to the field of optics and photonics: Clara Saraceno, Tamar Cromwijk, Pablo Artal, Nathalie Picqué, Monika Ritsch-Marte, Francesco Poletti, Yoshimasa Kawata, and Xu Liu. A heartfelt thank you to all the plenary speakers for their inspiring talks!

The EU Project Sessions, already the 9th edition organized at EOSAM, highlighted the emerging photonic and quantum technologies and their applications in imaging, sensing, and communication, including exciting projects like HyperImage, ELENA, ADOPTION Project, RETINA project, Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA), Qu-PIC, QSNP, and the CONcISE project.

The EU project plenary session and podium discussion featured outstanding talks on the EU Photonics Initiatives and how to improve Europe’s competitiveness: Roberta Ramponi (Photonics21), Hugo Thienpont (PhotonHub), Heidi Ottevaere (Phortify), and Luis Trigo Vidarte (PIXEurope).

The Industrial Optics Podium Session focused on HR strategies for the growing photonics industry. EOS organized the podium together with the European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC). The podium was moderated by Jérémy Picot-Clémente, Technology Manager at EPIC, and featured insightful talks from Lydia Sanmartí-Vila (ICFO – 360 CARLA), Homa Zarebidaki (CSEM), Anne-Lise Viotti (Lund University), Martin Caldarola (Single Quantum), and Reinhard Windemuth (Panasonic Connect Europe). Following the podium, a networking reception was held, ensuring that every attendee had the opportunity to make new connections.

Fostering Connections

EOSAM 2025 attracted 440 top researchers, key leaders, students, and industry experts from 37 countries worldwide, with more than a third of the attendees coming from outside Europe. A considerable number of PhD students attended the conference, with students making up over 27% of the total attendees, bringing a fresh, dynamic energy to the discussions.

The vibrant exhibition, which featured 19 companies from Monday to Thursday, strengthened the ties between academia and industry. Beyond these professional connections, the welcome reception, coffee breaks, and lunch, all provided as part of the registration, created ample opportunities for effective networking among all attendees. The conference dinner was also something to remember, with the perfect weather and the beautiful setting of Art Centre Delft providing the ideal place to unwind and connect.

The opening ceremony was a truly special moment, as we were honored to have some of our Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) partners present, representing esteemed optical societies and networks from around the world: Prof. Xu Liu, General Secretary of the Chinese Optical Society (COS); Prof. Yoshimasa Kawata, Past President of the Optical Society of Japan (OSJ); and Prof. Manuel Filipe Costa, Immediate Past President of the Iberoamerican Network for Optics (RIAO).

After the EOSAM conference, TU Delft organized a 360 CARLA symposium with training in the conference facilities, connecting photonics-focused students and researchers with industry careers through workshops, lab visits and company pitches. The program was targeting HBO, Master’s and PhD students, as well as early-career researchers, interested in photonics and related innovation. TU Delft and EOS are part of the larger consortium behind the 360 CARLA project.

Recognizing Excellence in the Field

EOS celebrates the best papers published in its journal, the Journal of the European Optical Society-Rapid Publications, JEOS-RP, by awarding the EOS Prize annually. This year, the prize was awarded to the paper titled "Development of a wearable surface enhanced Raman scattering sensor chip based on silver nanowires for rapid detection of urea, lactate and pH in sweat," which was published in 2024. The winners were honored with a diploma and an invitation to hold a plenary talk at the main stage of EOSAM. Cristiano D'Andrea delivered an insightful plenary presentation on the work. Congratulations to the authors, Cristiano D'Andrea, Martina Banchelli, Chiara Amicucci, Panagis Polykretis, Filippo Micheletti, Marella De Angelis, Byungil Hwang, and Paolo Matteini, for this remarkable achievement!

JEOS-RP is an online, open-access journal, indexed in several databases and published in collaboration with national societies around Europe. The publisher is EDP Sciences.

The EOS Prize consists of a diploma and an invitation to present a plenary lecture during the EOSAM meeting. This lecture is closely related to the research covered by the paper with the same list of authors. The registration fees for the author presenting the lecture are waived. The best paper is selected by the EOS Prize Committee, which consists of the two JEOS-RP Chief Editors and the EOS Past President.

EOS thrives through its members and in Delft we celebrated the special people driving the community forward:

Gilles Pauliat and Paul Urbach have been instrumental in shaping the European Optical Society and continue to drive progress in optics and photonics through their visionary leadership and long-standing commitment. In recognition of their exceptional impact and enduring service to the EOS community, they were honored with the EOS Special Recognition Award.

EOS was also proud to welcome Maria Teresa Flores-Arias (ES), Stefan Sinzinger (DE), and Luca De Stefano (IT) as new EOS Fellows, celebrating their outstanding scientific contributions and dedication to advancing the optics and photonics field. Congratulations to all!

EOS also recognizes the bright minds of the future. EOS proudly awarded the best student presentations at EOSAM, sponsored this year by Bühler, Evatec, and Rhysearch. Congratulations to the winners: Fabrizio Aaron Rivera Sanchez, Natalia Vakula, and Alessandro Zecchetto!

Finally, it was a privilege to host the ICO-IUPAP Early Career Scientist Prize in Optics award ceremony at EOSAM 2025. This prize, awarded annually since 2008 by IUPAP through the International Commission for Optics (ICO), recognizes scientists who have made noteworthy contributions to applied optics and photonics within 8 years of research experience after earning a PhD. Prof. Bhavin J. Shastri, the 2020 awardee, was recognized “for his pioneering contributions to Neuromorphic Photonics.” At EOSAM, Prof. Shastri gave a presentation on “Photonic neuromorphic computing for solving hard optimization problems”, showcasing cutting-edge approaches to brain-inspired photonic processors for faster and more energy-efficient computation.

Disseminating Research and Looking Forward

For those participants who have chosen to submit their abstracts to the EOSAM proceedings, the final accepted versions were published online in EPJ Web of Conferences by EDP Sciences. You can access the online proceedings from EOSAM 20225 here: EPJ Web of Conferences. Each article is assigned a DOI number and referenced via CrossRef®. The papers published in the EOSAM proceedings are highly visible, as they are indexed in multiple platforms, including the recently added indexing in Scopus. EPJ Web of Conferences is an open-access publication series focused on publishing high-quality conference proceedings in the fields of Physics and related sciences. Scopus is one of the world’s largest abstract and citation databases of peer-reviewed literature. This inclusion recognizes the high quality of research published and enhances the visibility, discoverability, and impact of the EOSAM conference proceedings across the global scientific community.

Finally, EOSAM authors have the opportunity to submit an extended paper to the journal of EOS, JEOS-RP, with exceptionally low publishing fees. For more information, visit our website: EOSAM 2025 Topical Issue.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in and attending EOSAM this year! We appreciate the contributions of our exhibitors, partners, and sponsors. The memories of EOSAM 2025 will linger long after the conference, and we look forward to creating new ones in Tampere, Finland, from August 24-28, 2026. Be sure to mark your calendars for the next edition of the EOSAM scientific conference and exhibition!

Until we meet again,

Elina Koistinen, EOS Executive Director
Boglárka Selényi, EOS Communications and Events Assistant

In the Afterglow of EOSAM 2025