Plenary Speakers

EOSAM includes several high-level speakers from various fields of optics.
These plenary speakers will present their research to the whole audience at EOSAM.
Watch all Plenary talks here: https://app.livestorm.co/european-optical-society

Hatice Altug

Institute of Bioengineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Hatice Altug is professor of Bioengineering Department at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She is also director of the EPFL Doctoral School in Photonics. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University. Prof. Altug’s research is focused in the field of nanophotonics and its application to biosensing. Her laboratory is introducing next generation sensors, spectroscopy and imaging technologies for label-free, real-time and high-throughput analysis of biological samples for disease diagnostics, bioanalytics and life sciences.

Prof. Altug is the recipient of 2012 Optical Society of America Adolph Lomb Medal and U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2011, and received many prestigious young investigator grants including an ERC Consolidator Grant, U.S. Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, U.S. NSF CAREER Award)

New Frontiers in NanoPhotonics: Next-Generation BioSensors

Nanophotonics, which excels at generating enhanced light matter interactions and sub-wavelength light confinement, enables us to manipulate light in ways that are not possible to achieve with diffraction limited optics and natural materials. These unique aspects are leading to numerous disruptive technologies including in sensing, imaging and spectroscopy. In this talk I will present how we employ nanophotonics to introduce powerful biosensor systems that can have impact on a wide range of areas including basic research in life sciences, early disease diagnostics, safety and point-of-care technologies.

Email: hatice.altug@epfl.ch
Web-page: https://bios.epfl.ch/ Twitter: @EPFL_altug_lab

Yuri Kivshar

Nonlinear Physics Center at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Yuri Kivshar received a PhD degree in physics in 1984 from the USSR Academy of Science (Kharkov, Ukraine). From 1988 to 1993 he worked at several research centres in USA, Spain, and Germany, and in 1993 he moved to Australia where later he established Nonlinear Physics Center at the Australian National University. Yuri Kivshar’s research interests include nonlinear physics, metamaterials, and nanophotonics. He is Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and also Fellow of OSA, APS, SPIE and IOP. He received several awards including Pnevmatikos Prize in Nonlinear Science (Greece), Lyle Medal (Australia), Lebedev Medal (Russia), The State Prize in Science (Ukraine), Harrie Massey Medal (UK), and Humboldt Research Award (Germany).

Metaphotonics and metasurfaces

Metamaterials---artificial electromagnetic media that are structured on the subwavelength scale---were initially suggested for the realisation of negative-index media, and later they became a paradigm for engineering electromagnetic space and controlling propagation of waves. However, applications of metamaterials in optics are limited due to inherent losses in metals employed for the realisation of artificial optical magnetism. Recently, we observe the emergence of a new field of all-dielectric resonant metaphotonics aiming at the manipulation of strong optically-induced electric and magnetic Mie-type resonances in dielectric and semiconductor nanostructures with relatively high refractive index. Unique advantages of dielectric resonant nanostructures over their metallic counterparts are low dissipative losses and the enhancement of both electric and magnetic fields that provide competitive alternatives for plasmonic structures including optical nanoantennas, efficient biosensors, passive and active metasurfaces, and functional metadevices. This talk will summarize the most recent advances in the fields of metamaterials and metaphotonics including active nanophotonics as well as recently emerged fields of topological photonics and nonlinear metamaterials.

Luis Plaja

University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

Prof. Luis Plaja. Full professor at the Department of Physics in Universidad de Salamanca and leader of the research group in Laser Applications and Photonics. He has devoted most of his research career in the field of high-harmonic generation and other non-perturbative phenomena arising from the interaction of ultrashort intense lasers with matter. As a young scientist, he was initially interested in microelectronics, joining as predoctoral the Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven. After switching to the field of intense laser-matter interactions, he concluded his phD thesis in 1993, in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He joined Universidad de Salamanca as postdoc and, after a post doctoral training in Universität Bielefeld, he got a tenure and professorship in Salamanca. He is most know by his contributions to the theoretical description of the strong-field matter interactions, mainly within the frame of the strong field approximation. Lately, he has been involved in proposals for producing structured high-frequency laser pulses, among them the recent report of light beams with torque.

Boost in translation: Structuring high-frequency light using high-harmonic sources

High-harmonic generation is an extraordinary phenomenon arising from the non-perturbative interaction of light with matter. It is not only a source of high-frequency coherent radiation, reaching the soft x rays, but also a tool to explore nature with attosecond resolution. In the most common approach, high harmonics result from the frequency conversion of infrared intense driving pulses. In the translation to higher frequencies, some of the driving laser properties are well preserved -such as coherence- while others are strongly modified. We shall review some interesting new scenarios emerging from this partial mapping of the characteristics of the infrared drivers to the high harmonic radiation. Among them, the non-trivial coupling of the orbital angular momentum with the spin (polarisation) of light allows the generation of complex structured high-frequency radiation with novel properties as, for instance, light beams with torque.

José Luís Santos

Physics and Astronomy Department of Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Graduated in Physics by University of Porto (1983). PhD (1993) and Habilitation (2008) from the same University. His main research interests are related with optical fibre sensing and optical fibre technology. He holds the position of Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department of Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto; researcher of INESCTEC – Center of Applied Photonics.

New Paths in Optical Sensing

Optical sensing has for long been associated with leading-edge performance and recent developments indicate this trend will continue. Progresses both at the level of well-established optical technologies and on the uncovered of fundamental optical science with direct impact on sensing and measurement justifies such statement. Here it is presented a glimpse of those progresses and of the fascinating new world of optical sensing in the realm of quantum mechanics, where truly qualitatively novel possibilities for measurement and sensing stand for discovery.