IPOS Launch and Symposium- "Faster, Further, Smarter"

Presents:
Optical Communications: Innovations (and Their Needs) Abound

Alan Willner (Ph.D., Columbia) has worked at AT&T Bell Labs and Bellcore, and is Prof. of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California. He received the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House, Packard Foundation Fellowship, Fulbright Senior Scholars Award, and Eddy Paper Award. Prof. Willner was IEEE LEOS President, General Co-Chair of CLEO, and Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/OSA J. Lightwave Technology and OSA Optics Letters. He has 750 publications.

Presents:
Photonic Crystal Fibres and Their Applications

Photonic Crystal Fibres are optical fibres with holes along the length of the fibre. With the large refractive index difference between air and silica, the PCF technology offers a huge enhancement of the design space compared to traditional fibre optics. In this talk, Peter Skovgaard will present the technology, examples of various photonic devices and a few examples of the vast range of application that this technology offers. The talk will include presentation of the Photonic Lantern and Hexabundle devices that we are currently developing with the AAO.

Biography:
Dr Peter M. W. Skovgaard has been with Crystal Fibre A/S, Denmark for 8 years. He is a senior scientist and group leader and is responsible for application-oriented solutions, including fused combiners, high power fibre lasers and packaging. Peter received his PhD in Physics in Cork, Ireland in semiconductor diodes. He then went to the Technical University of Denmark as a post doc before joining Crystal Fibre. He has played a key role in many of the patents and world records obtained by Crystal Fibre.

Presents:
Where next for optical communications - an industry perspective

Optical communications has underpinned the dramatic growth in the internet and is now the technology of choice for the delivery of high-bandwidth connectivity throughout communications networks. As an industry, however, it remains relatively immature and tends to be over-affected by economic cycles. This presentation will attempt to look at what the future holds for the optical communications industry from both a technology and a business perspective.

Biography:
Dr Simon Poole is an engineer/entrepreneur with over 30 years experience in communications technologies academia and industry. As a researcher he was a member of the team that invented the Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifier (EDFA) which is recognised globally as one of the key inventions underpinning the optical communications revolution. He was a founder of the Optical Fibre Technology Centre (OFTC) at Sydney University and also of the Australian Photonics CRC He is Australia’s leading entrepreneur in the area of optical communications, having personally founded and sold two extremely successful photonics companies (Indx and Engana) and being closely involved in many others. As Director, New Business Ventures, of Finisar Australia he is now leading an internal start-up to expand Finisar Australia’s core activities into the field of Optical Instrumentation.

Presents:
Astrophotonics for interferometry, when tiny optics meet giant telescopes.

The coherent combination of the optical beams coming from a telescope array requires a complex instrumentation, with severe stability and precision constraints. Photonics offer a unique solution for the implementation of such instrument and even open the way for a fully integrated instrument embedded on a single coin size device.

Biography:
Pierre Kern graduated from Ecole Supérieur d'Optique (Orsay, France) and defended his PhD thesis, in 1990 on the first demonstration of an adaptive optics system dedicated to astronomy. Hired by LAOG for the development of interferometric instruments, Pierre Kern took an active part to the construction of large instrument of the European Very Large Telescope (NAOS, main adaptive optics of the VLT, AMBER first 3 telescope beam combiner instrument ). In the mean time since 1995 Pierre Kern started at LAOG photonics development for further interferometric applications, with joined contributions of specialists from both photonics and interferometric astronomy domains. He is also at the origin of the development of micro deformable mirrors which are now manufactured for various applications including Ophalmology, Astronomy, and laser. Pierre Kern was the technical director of LAOG between 2003 and 2007.

Presents:
Photonics for life science- imaging, manipulations and engineering

Two-photon or multiphoton optical microscopy, physically based on the phenomenon discovered by Maria Göppert-Mayer, a Nobel Laureate in 1963, was invented in 1990 in combination with a femtosecond laser. It has revolutionised modern optical microscopy as it provides a powerful tool for 3D microscopy as well as 3D cellular manipulation and engineering for localised biomedical studies.

Biography:
Professor Min Gu, a University Distinguished Professor and a Special Advisor to Vice Chancellor, is Director of the Centre for Micro-Photonics at Swinburne University of Technology. He is a sole author of two standard reference books and has over 550 publications (in which 280 in internationally refereed journals) in nano/biophotonics. He is a Past President of the International Society of Optics within Life Sciences and a Vice President of the International Commission for Optics (a member of IUPAP and ICSU). He is a member of the editorial board of 13 internationally leading journals in optical science and photonics. He is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), the Institute of Physics (IoP, UK), the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP), the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE).

Presents:
Solar Energy

Solar energy is special. It is vast, ubiquitous and indefinitely sustainable. The solar resource utilised by photovoltaics and solar heat is hundreds of times larger than all other energy resources combined.

Biography:
Professor Andrew Blakers is the Director of the ARC Centre for Solar Energy Systems and the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian National University. He was a Humboldt Fellow and has held Australian Research Council QEII and Senior Research Fellowships. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering, the Institute of Energy and the Institute of Physics. He has published approximately 200 papers and 12 patents. His research interests are in the areas of photovoltaic and solar energy systems; particularly advanced thin film silicon solar cell technology and solar concentrator solar cells, components and systems.

Presents:
Measurement at the quantum limit using single photons

Quantum photonics is the study of light at the level of single photons, together with their remarkable quantum properties. New technologies based on advances in quantum photonics can offer secure communication, ultra-precise measurement for science and medicine, and powerful new methods for computing.

Biography:
Dr. Stephen Bartlett is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics, University of Sydney, and leads the Quantum Information Theory group. He obtained is Ph.D. in physics at the University of Toronto in 2000. The focus of his doctoral work was the application of group theoretical methods to physics, and to problems of quantization in particular. He began investigating theoretical quantum information and quantum optics at Macquarie University as a post-doc, continuing this research as a lecturer at the University of Queensland in 2003-2004. His current research interests include quantum computation in cold spin lattices using single-spin measurements, optical quantum computation, and understanding the role of reference frames in quantum theory.

Presents:
Astrophotonics- in search of the first stars in the universe

Multimode astrophotonics has a direct impact on Australian science and industry. Australian scientists are the world experts in multimode fibre applications and the new developments will keep them at the forefront.

Modern astronomy is on the verge of another revolution. The largest optical/infrared telescopes, with diameters up to 10m, are soon to be overtaken by 25-42m behemoths. The most compelling science goals are the detection of faint light from extrasolar planets in orbit around nearby stars and, at the other extreme, the detection of the first star-forming systems in the early universe which is the primary focus of this talk. The design and construction of the next generation of astronomical instruments presents us with a major challenge. The astronomical community must embrace new technological avenues, in particular, astrophotonics.

Biography:
Joss Bland-Hawthorn is the most recent recipient of a Federation Fellowship at the University of Sydney where he holds a chair in Physics. Joss has over 200 research papers, and is world renowned for his breakthroughs in astrophysics and in instrumentation. In 1986, he obtained his PhD in astrophysics from the Royal Greenwich Observatory prior to taking up faculty appointments in Hawaii and Texas. In 1993, he moved to the Anglo-Australian Observatory where he was Head of a highly successful group that pioneered astronomical concepts with names like Nod & Shuffle, Dazle, Starbugs, Honeycomb, and so on. Joss has carried out pioneering work on tunable filters, gratings and interplanetary laser communications. In 2002, he proposed the new field of astrophotonics that sits at the interface of astronomy and photonics – in Feb 2009, this field was featured in the Focus Issue of Optics Express. Joss is a recipient of the 2008 Muhlmann Award for experimental astronomy; he is also a recipient of the inaugural 2008 Group Achievement Award from the Royal Astronomical Society, London for his role in the highly acclaimed 2dF Galaxy Redshift survey that first mapped the 3D structure of the Universe.