Keynote Speakers

Speakers will be added as confirmed.

Yasuhiko Arakawa, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Title: Advances in Quantum Dot Lasers toward Practical Implementation
Yasuhiko Arakawa is a Specially-Appointed Professor and Director of Quantum Innovation Co-Creation Center, the Institute of Nano Quantum Information Electronics at The University of Tokyo. He received his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1980 and became a full Professor in 1993. He served as the President of International Commission for Optics (ICO) in the term from 2024 to 2017 and is a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) from 2017. He has authored more than 800 scientific journal papers and has given more than 500 invited presentations (incl. 95 plenary/keynote presentations) at international conferences. He received numerous awards, including Leo Esaki Award (2004), IEEE/LEOS William Streifer Award (2004), IEEE David Sarnoff Award, the Medal with Purple Ribbon (2009), C&C Prize (2010), Heinrich Welker Award, OSA Nick Holonyak Jr. Award (2011), the Japan Academy Prize (2017), IEEE Junichi Nishizawa Medal (2019), URSI Balthasar Van der Pol Gold Medal (2023), and honor of a Person of Cultural Merit (2023).

Roel Baets, Ghent University and imec, Belgium
Title: Towards additive manufacturing in silicon photonics
Roel Baets is an emeritus full professor at Ghent University (UGent) where he has led a mixed UGent – imec team. For about 40 years Roel Baets has worked in the field of integrated photonics, in multiple material platforms (silicon, silicon nitride, III-V). He has made diverse scientific contributions to this field, as well as to its applications and spin-off creation in telecom, datacom and sensing. He has led major research projects in silicon photonics in Europe and founded ePIXfab, the globally first Multi-Project-Wafer service for silicon photonics and now the European Silicon Photonics Alliance. In recent years his research has focused on medical and environmental sensing applications of silicon photonics. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, of the European Optical Society (EOS) and of Optica. He has been a recipient of the 2018 PIC-International Lifetime Achievement Award, of the 2020 Optica-IEEE John Tyndall Award and of the 2023 IEEE Photonics Award. As an emeritus professor Roel Baets continues a variety of advisory roles within UGent and imec, within ePIXfab and in the integrated photonics community at large.

José Capmany, iPRONICS Programmable Photonics S.L., Spain
Title: Analog programmable photonic computing: A new paradigm for data processing
Capmany holds BSc, MSc and PhD degrees In Telecommunications Engineering and a BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Physics. Over the last 30 years. he has been working in various areas of Photonics and Optical communications and his core expertise is in Microwave Photonics and Radio over Fiber Systems. He is also interested in Quantum Communications and Integrated Optics. He has published over 500 papers in international SCI ranked journals and Conferences. Capmany is a Fellow of IEEE, Optica and the IET. In 2012, he received the King James I award in novel technologies, the highest scientific distinction in Spain. He was recently awarded an ERC Advanced Grant, ERC-ADG-2016-741415 UMW-CHIP to carry out his dream of developing a universal and reconfigurable integrated microwave photonics processor.

Sir Peter Knight, UK National Quantum Technology Programme, UKRI and Quantum Metrology Institute, UK National Physical Laboratory, UK
Title: Quantum Technology- from concept to devices
Knight is Chair of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme Strategy Advisory Board and has been involved in the creation of the UK Quantum programme since its inception, including the creation of the UK Quantum Strategy and the commitment of £2.5bn over the next decade to the field.  He chairs the Quantum Metrology Institute at the National Physical Laboratory and is Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College where until 2010 he was Deputy Rector (Research). He was knighted in 2005 for his work in optical physics. Knight was the 2004 President of the Optical Society of America and 2011-2013 President of the Institute of Physics. He was until 2010 chair of the UK Defence Scientific Advisory Council and remains a UK Government science advisor. His research centres on quantum optics, nonclassical light and quantum technology. He has won the Thomas Young Medal and the Glazebrook Medal of the Institute of Physics, the Ives Medal and the Walther Award of Optica, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Faraday Prize of the IET. 

Michal Lipson, Coumbia University, USA
Title: Scalability of Silicon photonics 
Prof. Michal Lipson is the Eugene Higgins Professor at Columbia University. Her research focus is on Nanophotonics and includes the investigation of novel phenomena, as well as the development of novel devices and applications. Prof. Lipson pioneered critical building blocks in the field of Silicon Photonics, which today is recognized as one of the most promising directions for solving the major bottlenecks in microelectronics.  She is the inventor of over 45 issued patents and has co-authored more than 250 scientific publications. In recognition of her work in silicon photonics, she was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her numerous awards include the NAS Comstock Prize in Physics, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Blavatnik Award, Optica’s R. W. Wood Prize, the John Tyndall Award, the IEEE Photonics Award, and an honorary degree from Trinity College, University of Dublin. In 2023, she served as President of Optica.

Peter O'Brien, Tyndall Institute, University College Cork, Ireland
Title: Developing scalable optical and electrical packaging technologies and moving towards more integrated photonic-electronic systems
Prof. Peter O'Brien is head of the Photonics Packaging & Systems Integration Group at the Tyndall Institute, University College Cork. He is the director of the European Photonics Packaging Pilot Line (www.pixapp.eu) and leads the training programme as part of the European Photonics Hub (www.photonhub.eu). His group focuses on developing optical and electrical packaging technologies with a view to scaling up to production. They are involved in multiple EU (e.g. EU Quantum Flagship, Europractice, etc), Science Foundation Ireland, National Science Foundation (US), and direct industry projects. Prof. O'Brien previously founded and was CEO of a start-up company manufacturing speciality photonic systems for biomedical applications, which he sold in 2009. Prior to this, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology and a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was involved in the development of submillimetre wave devices for remote sensing applications. He received his degree and PhD in Physics from Trinity College Dublin and University College Cork.

Prof Sir David Payne, University of Southampton, UK
Prof D. N. Payne is an internationally distinguished research pioneer in photonics, having been in the field for over 50 years. Optical fibre technology is one of the greatest scientific successes of the last three decades and Payne’s contributions are acknowledged as seminal in many areas.  Optical fibres underpin the internet, provide new laser capability and environmental sensing, and drive growth to the benefit of all nations. Payne’s work spans many diverse areas of photonics, from telecommunications and optical sensors to nanophotonics and optical materials. With his colleagues he has made many of the key technical achievements in almost every area of optical fibre technologies and his work has had a direct impact on worldwide telecommunications, as well as nearly all fields of optical R&D. As a result, he is the most highly honoured UK scientist in photonics. Payne’s pioneering work in fibre fabrication in the 70’s resulted in almost all the special fibres in use today.  He led the team that in 1985 first announced the silica fibre laser and the Erbium-Doped Optical Amplifier (EDFA), the device that fuelled an explosive growth in the internet through its ability to transmit and amplify vast amounts of data.  The EDFA is widely regarded as being one of the foremost and most significant developments in modern telecommunications.  

Philip St.J. Russell, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany
Title: Twisted light in chiral photonic crystal fibres
Philip Russell has over the last three decades been exploring novel light-matter interactions in photonic crystal fibres—a new kind of light guide that he first proposed in 1991. He obtained his doctorate in 1979 at the University of Oxford, subsequently working in Germany, France, the USA and the UK. From October 2005 to March 2021 he held the Krupp Chair in Experimental Physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and in 2009 he co-founded the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL). Following his retirement as MPL director, in April 2024 he became scientific director of the RCALS Centre for Advanced Lightwave Science in Hangzhou, China. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Optica and has won a number of awards including the 2000 Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize, the 2005 Thomas Young Prize of the Institute of Physics (London), the 2005 Körber Prize for European Science, the 2013 EPS Prize for Research into the Science of Light, the 2014 Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis, the 2015 IEEE Photonics Award and the 2018 Rank Prize for Optoelectronics. He was OSA's President in 2015, the International Year of Light.

Andrew Shields, Toshiba Europe Ltd, UK
Title: Towards scalable quantum networks
Andrew Shields (Vice President, Toshiba Europe Ltd) leads the quantum technology business in Toshiba, which is commercialising quantum safe communications from their sites in Cambridge, UK and Tokyo, Japan.  Previously he led R&D in Toshiba on quantum technology, publishing over 500 research papers and patents in this field. He was a co-founder of the Industry Specification Group for QKD at ETSI and served as Chair for several years.  He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and has been awarded the Mott (2013) and  Katharine Burr Blodgett (2022) Medals by the Institute of Physics. 

Dimitra Simeonidou, University of Bristol, UK
Title: UK-born optical technologies enabling solutions for the next generation mobile networks
Dimitra Simeonidou is a Full Professor at the University of Bristol, the Director of Smart Internet Lab and the Founding Director of the Bristol Digital Futures Institute. Her research is focusing on the fields of high-performance networks, programmable networks, Future Internet, wireless-optical convergence, 5G/6G and smart city infrastructures. In the past few years, she is increasingly working on cross-disciplinary topics such as climate change and digital transformation for society and businesses. Dimitra has been the Technical Architect, and the CTO of the smart city project Bristol Is Open. She is currently leading the Bristol City/Region 5G and Open RAN pilots. Dimitra is a member of the UK Government Supply Chain Diversification Advisory Council, a founding member of the UK Telecoms Innovation Network and member of the OFCOM Spectrum Advisory Board. She has led major research projects funded by UK Goverment and the EC. She is currently coordinating the DSIT REASON project developing  blueprint architectures and technologies for 6G and the EPSRC JOINER project, aiming to establish a UK-wide experimentation platform for 6G research and innovation. 

Radu-Florin Stancu, Applied Optics Group, University of Kent, UK
Title: 125 Micrometer Fiber Optic Sensors for Tissue Proximity Detection and B-Scan Acquisition
Dr. Radu-Florin Stancu holds a BSc in Applied Physics, an MSc in Photonics and Advanced Materials, and, in 2015, he has completed his PhD in Biomedical Optics at the University of Kent with the thesis “Akinetic Tuneable Optical Sources with Applications”. During his doctoral studies he co-invented and been awarded a patent for a dual mode-locking tuning mechanism for infrared akinetic swept sources integrated in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). After several years dedicated to various educational roles, including departmental management, educational research, and developing University Foundation curriculum and examination papers for Physics and Engineering courses, Radu has returned full-time at the University of Kent, as Research Associate in Photonics and Biomedical Optics. Since 2023, as part of the Applied Optics Group research team, he is developing optical fiber based proximity sensors and OCT imaging devices for a micro surgery robotics project led by a Consortium including the University of Kent, King’s College London and the Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Mark Thompson, PsiQuantum, UK
Title: Integrated photonics for quantum computing
Mark Thompson is Co-Founder and Chief Technologist of PsiQuantum. He has over 20 years' experience in the fields of photonics and quantum technologies, with a PhD from Cambridge University, industrial positions held at Toshiba, Corning, Bookham Technology and PsiQuantum, a Professorship at the University of Bristol and Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He established the Bristol Centre for Quantum Engineering and the Bristol Quantum Technology Enterprise Center, and has held prestigious UK and European fellowships and prizes. He has more than 200 publications and patents and has founded two startup companies in quantum technologies.