Attend to hear: The Future of Digital Optics: From Micro-optics to Nanophotonic

The Future of Digital Optics: From Micro-optics to Nanophotonics

Tues, June 5

6:30 - 9 p.m.
San Francisco
50 California St., 17th Floor - North Beach Conf Rm

Abstract

Today, the dominant paradigm in optics is shifting from analog to digital, mirroring the revolution in electronics that occurred 50 years ago.

Analog optics involves conventional lenses, mirrors and waveguide optics. Digital optics involves optical elements composed of micro-structures designed by a computer and fabricated by lithographic techniques. The current paradigm shift facilitates miniaturization and mass replication at scales impossible before, exposing new optical phenomena and new applications in an extraordinarily broad range of industries, including data storage, telecom, datacom, manufacturing, medical devices, defense, security, and wearable computing.

Importantly, because digital optics manufacturers can leverage many insights from semiconductor fabrication, this paradigm shift is happening at a much faster pace than the electronics shift.

Come join us as we explore this shift, its advances, and their implications.

Speaker:

Bernard Kress, PhD

Currently working for Google X in Mountain View, Bernard Kress has been involved in the field of digital optics since the late 1980s, and in numerous digital optics-based start-ups in Europe and the US since the early 1990s. He has held teaching positions in photonics at University Louis Pasteur Strasbourg and University of St-Etienne in France, and supervised various PhD theses on digital optics. He teaches short courses on this topic at various international conferences including SPIE, OSA and EOS. He has been working with established industries around the world and with start-ups in Silicon Valley, with applications ranging from optical data storage, optical telecom, military and homeland security applications, LED and laser displays, industrial and medical sensors, biotechnology systems, optical security devices, high power laser material processing, to consumer electronics.

Dr. Kress is on the advisory boards of various photonics companies in the US and has also been advising venture capital firms in the Silicon Valley for due diligence reviews in photonics, especially in micro- and nano-optics. He holds more than 25 patents based on digital optics technology and applications, and is the author of more than 100 papers on this subject. His latest book was published in 2009, Applied Digital Optics: from micro-optics to nanophotonics. The first of his three books on digital optics, Digital Diffractive Optics (2000), has been translated into Japanese. He is also the author of a chapter in the best seller Optical System Design (2007), edited by R. Fisher.