David C Brown

Founder and CTO, Advanced Photonic Sciences, USA

Dr. David C. Brown is the Founder and CTO of Advanced Photonic Sciences, a renowned laser physicist and engineer, and is a pioneer in cryogenic high-power solid-state lasers and in the understanding of thermal effects in cryogenic and fiber lasers. He has published widely on high average power CW, picosecond, and frequency-doubled picosecond cryogenic Yb:YAG laser systems, and on the room-temperature and cryogenic spectroscopy of Yb:YAG, Ho:YAG, Yb:LuAG, and Yb:Lu₂O₃. He has held senior research positions at The Laboratory For Laser Energetics at The University of Rochester, Northrop-Grumman, and the GE Corporate Research and Development Center.

Yosef Ben Ezra

Dean of Engineering, Holon institute of Technology, Israel

Prof. Yosef Ben Ezra, Dean of Engineering faculty at Holon institute of Technology and CTO at Mer Group, received his Ph.D. from the Tel-Aviv University. During 2003-2005 Prof. Ben-Ezra was the principle researcher in joint industry-academy project TRANSMOR focused on automatic detection and classification of power transients in WDM optical communication networks. Between 2007-2009 Prof. Yosef Ben-Ezra was the principle researcher in a joint industry-academy project, DIAMOND, that developed high-spectral-efficient modulation techniques for modern optical communications.  In the framework of MAGNET project Tera-Santa Prof. Ben-Ezra developed the novel method of OFDM based on Multiwavelets. He is currently working on the silicon photonic implementation of the Multiwavelet OFDM in Peta-Cloud consortium.  He has co-authored over 85 papers in international journals and conferences in fields of semiconductor physics and nonlinear effects, and optical communication. He is the author 15 chapters in scientific books and of 12 patents.

Aurel Ymeti

CEO, Nanoalmyona BV, Netherlands

Aurel Ymeti is co-Founder and CEO of Nanoalmyona BV, a hightech Dutch company specialized in research and technology development, project management and new business development in Hightech Systems and Materials, including integrated photonics, Lab-on-a-Chip biosensing, optoelectronics, microscopy and nanomedicine.

He received a MSc in Theoretical Physics from the University of Tirana, Albania, in 1996, and a PhD in Applied Physics/Nanotechnology from the University of Twente, Netherlands, in 2004, working on the development of ultrasensitive multichannel integrated photonic (bio-)sensing platforms. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the same University on development of portable devices for staging of HIV infection in point-of-care settings, later commercialized by Immunicon/Veridex (J&J).

In 2008 Aurel co-founded Ostendum, a spin-off company of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology of the University of Twente, focusing on the commercialization of extremely sensitive and label-free optical analysis methods for rapid detection of micro-organisms and biomarkers based on the Lab-on-a-Chip Nanotechnology, initially invented and developed by Aurel during his PhD project. As CTO at Ostendum, he was responsible for the research and technology development, product management and new business development. In 2017 Aurel was appointed as Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering Physics, Polytechnic University of Tirana, Albania, working on application of High Tech Systems and Materials in innovative product development.

Aurel has (co)authored about 40 publications in refereed journals, peer-reviewed conference proceedings and books, is inventor of several patents and has presented more than 30 keynote/invited lectures in (inter)national conferences. He was/is involved as a member of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), Optical Society of America (OSA), International AIDS Society (IAS), International Society for Analytical Cytology (ISAC) and Advisory Board Member of the Lifeboat Foundation. Aurel has served as Program Committee Member of several international conferences, including SPIE conference series of Defense, Security and Sensing (2010 – 2015).

His work on photonic biosensors has been featured in many well-known international media publications, incl. MIT’s Technology Review, Nature, Le Monde and BBC Focus Magazine and in 2007 the highly reputable business magazine FORBES has highlighted his work as one of the “13 Amazing New Nanotechnologies”. Aurel has received several awards including the prestigious European Lab-on-a-Chip Nanodevices Technology Innovation Leadership Award from FROST & SULLIVAN in 2013.

Domenico Di Mola

Vice President , Packet-Optical Platform, Juniper Networks, USA

Born in Southern Italy (Puglie), Domenico DiMola received his Master’s Degree in Electronic Engineering and post doctorate from Polytechnic of Turin-Italy. In 2008, Domenico led the Alcatel-Lucent high-speed engineering team that develop the first single carrier 100G QPSK Coherent solution based on 65nm CMOS integrated DSP-ASIC. Currently, he is VP of Engineering in Juniper’s Chief Development Office and leads the Packet-Optical platform team. He has been a keynote speaker at ECIO, ECOC, OFC and MWC and holds several fundamental patents in technologies, components and systems for DWDM networks. Domenico lives in California with his family and 2 dogs (Riri and Abby).

Domenico has spent his entire professional life, enjoying leader positions, working with most talented and successful executive of Silicon Valley and Global Technology and Innovation world.

Amol Chandekar

Vice President, R & D, Nanoptek Corporation, France

Amol Chandekar has obtained his PhD at the university of Massachusetts Lowell, USA in the field of materials science and nanotechnology. For his PhD, Dr. Chandekar developed a novel way of making nanostructures on different substrates by altering the surface properties of the substrate using functionalized molecules such as alkane thiols and silanes. He also had synthesized gold nanoparticles, functionalized them with alkane thiols and fabricated chemical vapor sensor using them. Currently, Dr. Chandekar is a vice president R&D at Nanoptek Corporation. At Nanoptek, Dr Chandekar performed groundbreaking research to develop a highly efficient, robust, scalable and low cost TiO2 photocatalyst, which absorbs UV and near visible part of the solar spectrum, for water splitting for hydrogen production using sunlight only. While working at Anderlab technologies, he developed industrial scale formulations for synthesizing several nanoparticles including Titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, aluminum oxide and silicon dioxide and dispersions based on them. He has published several publications in the peer reviewed journals in the field of material science and nanotechnology and also has filed 17 US and international patents.

Denis Julien Gendron

Director of R&D, Claire Lasers Corporation, Canada

Denis Julien Gendron, Director of R&D, Claire Lasers Corporation, received his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo. Denis J. Gendron earned a Physics B.Sc. Coop degree in 1988 from U. de Sherbrooke, with specialty in semiconductor manufacturing. In 1997, he graduated with Physics PhD from University of Waterloo, for his study of photodissociation and photo-ionization processes at molecular-level with pulsed laser in supersonic jet.  After graduation, he built the pulsed laser laboratory of Donna Strickland at U. of Waterloo (2018 Nobel Prize of Physics). In 1998, he joined the National Research Council of Canada (Ottawa, ON) as Research Associate, and then worked as a laser engineer for Fibertek Inc. (Herndon VA) in 2000, and Spectra-Physics Lasers Inc. (SPLI, Mountain View, CA) in 2001, and Coherent-AMT (now Clarion Medical, Cambridge, ON) in 2002. In 2003, Denis founded Claire Lasers to serve manufacturing industries. He has co-authored many papers in international journals and conferences in fields of chemical physics, laser science and engineering and biomedical lasers.  He authored 3 patents.

F. J. Duarte

Principal Research Scientist, The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Duarte is the author of some 200 archival scientific publications. His contributions are mentioned in nearly two hundred scholarly books, including several classics, and his book titles are held at more than four thousand libraries, worldwide. Since 2017 he has been appointed Editor of the book series Coherent Sources and Applications for IoP Publishing (London). One of his papers, on laser pulse compression, is listed by the American Institute of Physics as relevant to the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Dr. Duarte is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics (1987) and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1993). At the Eastman Kodak Imaging Research Laboratories he received the Chief Technical Officer Patent Award (1995). He has also received the Paul F. Forman Engineering Excellence Award (1995), for the "invention of the N-slit laser interferometer," and the David Richardson Medal (2016), “for seminal contributions to the physics and technology of multiple-prism arrays for narrow-linewidth tunable laser oscillators and laser pulse compression”, from the Optical Society.

Paulo Monteiro

Associate Professor, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Paulo P. Monteiro received the diploma “Licenciatura” in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Aveiro in 1988, the M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering, from the University of Wales UK, in 1990 and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, from the University of Aveiro, in 1999. Presently, he is Associate Professor at the University of Aveiro and Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Telecomunicações. His main research interests include Optical Communication Networks and Microwave Photonics. He tutored and co-tutored successfully more than 14 PhD’s, having participated in more than 28 research projects (national and international). He has authored/co-authored more than 18 patent applications and over 110 papers in journals and 380 conference contribution. He is a member of the ECOC Technical Program Committee and Senior Member of IEEE.

Masakatsu Murakami

Professor, Osaka University

Masakatsu Murakami is Professor of Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE), Osaka University. After he defended Doctor thesis in 1988, he worked for three years at Max-Planck-Institute for quantum-optics (MPQ) in Germany on laser-matter interaction and heavy ion fusion physics.  After MPQ, he engaged himself in laser isotope separation for two years at Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) in Japan. Since 1993 he has worked at ILE, Osaka University.He now leads a theoretical group at ILE. The scope of current scientific interests concerns interactions with intense laser and matter, high temperature plasma, laser ion acceleration, hydrodynamic phenomena in astrophysics. Recently he has proposed a new concept“micro-bubble implosion” (Scientific Reports8, 7537(2018)) to generate ultrahigh field by using ultraintense ultrashort laser.The proton beams thus generated have high potential for a number of future applications such as cancer therapy, compact neutron sources, and fusion energy.

Lara Motta

Professor, Biophotonics Applied to Health Sciences Postgraduate Program

Dentist, PhD in Public Health.Experience in Dentistry and Health Management, with emphasis on the evaluation of new health technologies. In oral health, he works on the themes of temporomandibular disorders and bruxism in children and adolescents, well-being and quality of life. Application and clinical evaluation of biophotonics application protocols for health repair, lasers and LEDs. Analysis of the insertion and cost-effectiveness of new health technologies.

Dr. Mukul Chandra Paul

Professor, CSIR-Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute, Kolkata, India

Dr. Mukul Chandra Paul received the Ph.D. degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India in 2003. Presently he is working as chief scientist at fiber optics and photonics division , central glass and ceramic research institute, Kolkata, India. He has authored over 250 scientific publications, 10 book chapters and holding seven US patents on fabrication of rare-earth doped ?bers. He also edited 2 Books on Fiber Laser.  He also made major scientific contributions through International collaborative research work with various countries such as Malaysia, China, Taiwan, UK, France, Russia, Vietnam, Portugal etc. He is a member of OSA, IEEE and life member of MRSI and Indian Ceramic Society. 4 Ph.D. and 7 M.Sc. research works were directed by him. His current research interests include  various material composition based specialty optical fiber development for  continuous wave and pulsed fiber lasers at ~1 and 1.5  microns, high power optical amplifiers, fiber based saturable absorber, Broad-band supercontinuum sources