Conference Notes

Call for paper

Contributions are invited as short presentations (15 min) and posters for the main topics mentioned above or for all fields of applied optics. Submissions should be done via the online submission platform at http://www.dgao-proceedings.de/anmeldung/anmeldung_d.php). The General language of the conference is German, however, English contributions are welcome.

Program committee

S. Sinzinger, J. Czarske, C. Denz, C. Faber, A. Fischer, A. Heinrich, A. Heisterkamp, F. Höller, A. Jacobsen, N. Koukourakis, E. Langenbach, T. Thöniß

Contact

Cathleen John

TU Dresden

Fakultät Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik

Professur für Mess- und Sensorsystemtechnik

01062 Dresden, Germany

Tel.: +49 (351) 463-37657

Fax: +49 (351) 463-37716

E-Mail: dgao2017@tu-dresden.de

Deadlines and registration fees

While abstracts are due on 15th January, the main program will be published in March 2017. Early bird registration for all visitors will end on 6th May 2014. After that day the full registration will go up from €250 (Non members €270) to €255 (€305). Prices are subject to 7% VAT.

This view is called ‘Canaletto-view’ since it shows the old town silhouette similar to a painting from the famous Italian painter Canaletto from 1748. (Photo: Bgabel at wikivoyage.)

DGaO Young Scientist Award

For the fifth time, the DGaO will award the best dissertation and the best Master’s thesis from a German speaking country in the field of Applied Optics. The DGaO Young Scientist Award will be presented at the annual meeting in Dresden.

There will be separate cash awards for the best PhD dissertation and the best Master’s thesis of 2016, along with a 1-year full membership of the DGaO. The winners will also be invited to the Dresden meeting to give a presentation of their work.

In order for a student to be considered, supervisors will need to submit the original thesis as a PDF file to the DGaO secretary. The supervisor will also need to submit the following:

• thesis summary (max. 2 pages)

• appraisal statement

• curriculum vitae of candidate

• list of publications, patents related to thesis (if applicable).

Submission deadline for the prize is 16 March, 2017.

Dresden – City of Science

Dresden, the capitol of the federal state of Saxony is a pleasant town with a rich history and beautiful architecture. Today it is the seat of the Saxony State Government and the Saxony parliament. But there is much more than just representative administration buildings: Frauenkirche, Zwinger and Semperoper as well as many other world famous architectural monuments make up this wonderful city. Dresden hosts a number of museums such as the New Masters Gallery, the New Green Vault, the Museum of Transportation and the Hygiene Museum.

Today, Dresden is a leading location for industry, science and research in the fields of microelectronics, nano technology, material science applied optics and biomedical research. With about 40 000 employees the so-called Silicon Saxony is one of the most important sites for microelectronics in Europe.

Researchers from all around the world are attracted by research institutions like the TU Dresden, the Max-Planck-, Leibniz, Helmholtz and Fraunhofer institutes. In the recent fourth round of the German Excellence Initiative the Technical University was awarded two excellence clusters and one Graduate School. Applied optics is a main research focus in Dresden. Particularly successful are the researchers in the fields of biophotonics, organic LEDs, smart microscopes, high field lasers for cancer treatments and many more.

http://www.dgao.de/de/jahrestagung

Four innovations and one future prize

As in the preceding years, the awards presentation itself began with film portraits of the prizewinners and their work, followed by a laudation held by a jury member. The prizewinners were chosen during a jury meeting last May. Four of the eight finalists were able to convince the jury, which is why the jurors awarded two second place prizes.

Since 2006, the Berthold Leibinger Foundation has been honoring one scientist for their outstanding contributions to applied laser technology. In 2016, this honor was awarded to French professor Gérard Mourou of the École Polytechnique. Due to his invention of ‘chirped pulse amplification’ (CPA) at the University of Rochester, NY, in collaboration with his student Donna Strickland, Mourou is considered the ‘father’ of electromagnetic fields of high and ultra-high intensity fields, as laudator Ursula Keller said while explaining the jury’s choice. This technology enables the amplification of short laser pulses to extremely high peak power. With CPA, Mourou pioneered the field of femtosecond ophthalmology with more than one million patients a year today, and revolutionized the field of high intensity lasers. Most recently, he initiated Europe’s Extreme Light Infrastructure ELI in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania.

The first prize of the innovation award was presented to Swiss physicist Dr. Balthasar Fischer by Professor Wolfgang Marquardt. Fischer developed a membrane-free microphone at Vienna University of Technology that can hear through light. Marketed through Fischer’s company Xarion Laser Acoustics, the microphone is now finding applications in non-destructive metrology and the process control of machine tools. The microphone is also ideal for use as a sensor for optoacoustic imaging in biomedical engineering.

One of the second prizes was awarded to the founder of the company Crystalline Mirror Solutions, Dr. Garrett Cole from Santa Barbara, CA and Dr. Markus Aspelmeyer, professor at the University of Vienna. They developed crystalline semiconductor coatings for mirrors, which for example, can improve the precision of optical atomic clocks by orders of magnitude. Their mirrors have revolutionized the world of optical high precision measurement. For this, they were awarded one of the two second prizes by Professor Theodor Hänsch, Physics Nobel Prize laureate from 2005.

A further second prize was awarded to a total of 12 scientists from Saarbrücken and Dresden led by Professor Frank Mücklich and Professor Andrés-Fabián Lasagni. Mücklich’s working groups at Saarland University as well as the Steinbeis Forschungszentrum Material Engineering Center Saarland and Lasagni’s working groups at the Fraunhofer Institute for Materials and Beam Technology and at the Dresden University of Technology researched and developed the processes and laser systems to quickly and economically generate tiny micropatterns and nanopatterns using the effect of laser interference. Surfaces functionalized in this manner can reduce friction to a large extent or they can kill bacteria and thus reduce the transmission of germs. This technology will also be used to increase the reliability of electrical plug-in connections, such as in automobiles.

AOT authors win Leibinger price

A total of 33 developers from the Laser Guide Star Alliance won the third prize, which was awarded by Professor H. Jeffrey Kimble. Their high-power laser system is one of the key elements used in the construction of contemporary large telescopes on Earth. Based on earlier patented work and prototypes by the ESO, the international industrial consortium of TOPTICA in Garching and MPB Communications in Montreal, Canada, jointly developed a novel laser system. This technology offers advantages for the tracking of satellites and the detection of space debris as well as further applications. The respective groups were headed by Dr. Wilhelm Kaenders from TOPTICA, Dr. Wallace Clements from MPB and Dr. Domenico Bonaccini Calia from the ESO. Design considerations and system implementation of the laser guide star facility were published in this journal in June 2014 (https://doi.org/10.1515/aot-2014-0025).

The social part of the event began after the awards ceremony. The colorful mix of guests from society and politics, science and business, laser companies and laser users celebrated with the prizewinners and made new contacts while catching up with old acquaintances.

The Laser guide star team receives the Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis.

The next awards ceremony will take place in 2 years, in 2018, on the third Friday in September. Applications for the innovation award may be submitted up to December 31, 2017.