Andrew Forbes
19 - 23 October 2025
Prague Congress Centre
Prague, Czech Republic
Events
Andrew Forbes
University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Communicating distortion-free with structured light
Structured light holds tremendous promise for increased speed and security in optical communication, but unfortunately is easily distorted in perturbing media, e.g., atmospheric turbulence. Here I outline recent progress in structuring distortion-free light for communication across noisy channels.
About the Speaker
Prof. Forbes has at various times in his career found himself as teacher, janitor, secretary, receptionist, webmaster, systems engineer, sales rep, manager, director, and sometimes a scientist. He is presently a Distinguished Professor within the School of Physics at the U. Witwatersrand (South Africa) where in 2015 he established a new laboratory for Structured Light. He Director of South Africa’s Quantum Roadmap, a Fellow of SPIE, Optica, the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP), and an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He has won several national and international awards, including the national NSTF Photonics award for his contribution to the field over the past decade (2015), the Alexander von Humboldt Georg Forster Prize and Fellowship for outstanding contributions to photonics (2020), the South African Institute of Physics Gold Medal, (2020), the Sang Soo Lee award from the Korean Optical Society and OPTICA (2022) and is the 2024 winner of the Physics prize by TWAS for outstanding contributions to structured light.
