Photonics Europe 2010: Biophotonics is leading theme in Brussels

From April 12-16th the whole Photonics community met at the SPIE Photonics Europe 2010 in Brussels. Recent research, intense networking and EU initiatives were the focus of the conference for photonics. Over 2,000 participants from around the world attended the event. Thus, the event has established itself after only a few years as one of the largest of its kind in Europe. The accompanying industrial exhibition shrunk slightly with 131 exhibitors (2006: 150).

The scientific meeting was divided in 19 sub-conferences on topics such as metamaterials, optical modeling and Photonics for solar energy systems. The leading theme of the conference this year though was Biophotonics - a discipline where advances in optical technologies are used to detect disease earlier, to understand its causes and to provide a targeted treatment. With about 130 talks and posters, the sub-conference on Biophotonics was the largest of the 19 technical conferences. Furthermore two of the leading lights of this young field opened the conference: award-winner Prof. Stefan Hell (Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysical Chemistry, Germany) talked about the latest generation of microscopes that provide high-resolution films from living cells and Prof. Kishan Dholakia (Univ. of St. Andrews, UK) gave an overview of using light to manipulate living cells and inject substances directly into them. Besides the conference, there were many other events dedicated to Biophotonics, such as the Medical Session initiated by the EU Network for Biophotonics photonics4life. The Brussels meeting also paved the way towards the worldwide network “Biophotonics4Life”, whose node leaders met to agree on first joint activities.

There were a variety of events, which served communication and networking beyond the frontiers of the various research fields. These included, for example, the meeting of the "Women in optics', meetings in the context of European initiatives such as Photonics21 and the Innovation Village – A showcase area of the fair, where researchers with innovative developments could present their prototypes and compete for the Innovation Award. Researchers from photonics4life showed highly active in this domain as they participated with a variety of projects: from an electro-photonic Biochips and photoactive materials to tunable organic lasers. As a result the jury found two of their projects outstandingly innovative and awarded prizes in the individual category. Top winner was Thomas Woggon of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with a tunable organic laser. Second runner-up was Maria Farsari, from ISEL/FORTH, with photosensitive materials for two-photon polymerization.