OPINION: THE OPTICAL SOCIETY THE OPTICAL SOCIETY IN 2016
The Optical Society’s centennial advisory panel, chaired by Dr Chris Dainty, professorial research associate at the Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, have been working with staff and OSA volunteers to develop a year-long series of programmes and products to commemorate 100 years. These include a quarterly booklet series in Optics and
➤
Photonics News (OPN), the launch of a centennial microsite, Century of Optics and OSA 100 books, and celebrations at US and international meetings including FiO, The Optical Fibre Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) and Latin America Optics and Photonics Conference (LAOP). Other centennial activities will feature the unveiling of a special exhibit, giveaways,
OSA journals and we have incubator meetings looking at some of these wearable technologies – there’s work going on in Eindhoven that the EU Commission is funding, for instance. The type of sensing might include monitoring daily blood sugar levels, chemical and biological changes through the skin, and monitoring the ADP energy cycle. In the future, systems might be able to use this information to give feedback to physicians on a near immediate basis and look for trends that could affect your health. For more information on wearable technology, see the article on page 20. A lot of those sensors are in place or being developed today. Understanding the biophysical mechanisms and how to monitor these with biosensors is still a decade away. A 100G Ethernet backbone is probably going to be one of the critical steps as well, because this kind of telemedicine system will generate huge volumes of data that have to be transmitted, analysed and stored. Keeping this data secure is just as important, and that goes hand in hand with optics and photonics. Biomedical diagnostics is now becoming a reality and is something that’s enhancing our lives, maybe silently, to diagnose medical conditions earlier (read more about how photonics is enabling faster diagnostic systems on page 32). These are the kinds of things that will shape our lives that we probably don’t realise now, but will have a positive impact on the global community.
What technology will become a reality in the near future? In the next five to 10 years, there’s going to be movement towards curing blindness from retinal disease. There are multiple groups investigating artificial retinas and it stems from work carried out years ago – Smith and Boyle won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009 for the invention of the CCD sensor (Charles Kao was the third recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on optical fibres for communication). This work has been built on to design optical-based retinal implants that return some sight to the individual, essentially like putting
16 ELECTRO OPTICS l FEBRUARY 2016
receptions, travel grants, travelling lectures and more. Throughout 2016, the society will
invite visionaries, futurists, Nobel Prize winners and others in the optics and photonics fields to join the ‘Light the Future Speakers Series’. These discussions – open to the public – will be part of several meetings in the United States and across the globe, offering an opportunity to
a small CCD camera in the eye. There’s work taking place in Dublin, Newcastle, and in the US through the national institutes of health, looking at how these pixelated imaging systems can be implanted in the eye. There are 120 million rods and six to seven million cones in the retina. The imaging systems that are currently under investigation have around 1,000 pixels. One thousand pixels can discern contrast between light and dark areas, but facial recognition isn’t possible or reading fine print in a book. Higher resolution is needed to do that, but the first steps are under way. There are more than 100 individuals testing out these artificial retinas.
In the next 10 years, I think you
are going to see these devices being implanted by eye surgeons to return some degree of sight to patients suffering from impaired vision. In the next 100 years you’re going to see full blown camera imaging systems that will be interfaced directly into the visual cortex. We’re a long way off from that at the moment, but in taking these first steps, you’ve gone from CCD cameras 30 years ago to small imaging systems, to now being able to interface the sensors into the nervous system. The fact that those who are blind or have impaired vision have the hope of being able to see again, that to me is tremendously exciting research. The whole biomedical area is one that’s open for a great deal of optics and photonics-based research moving into the next 100 years.
What is the greatest challenge faced by the photonics industry?
I think the number one challenge continues to be education. We need to push industry and academia and government laboratories to continue to fund early education in the sciences, to continue to fund graduate level research and undergraduate level research in science, and to stimulate these really bright minds that we have around the world
hear directly from those that are paving the way for another century of innovation in light, such as one of the world’s leading futurists Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google and trustee of MIT Corporation, and Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York (CUNY), Princeton University and New York University, as well as co-creator of string field theory.
I think
the number one challenge continues to be education
to want to work in this field and make these revolutionary breakthroughs. There was a lot of outreach work done last year as part of the International Year of Light, and as we move into the OSAs’ centennial in 2016 this will continue. OSA has education outreach, student participation, and contests looking at what really is enabled by optics – what optics are in a cell phone, for instance. The cameras in cell phones today would cost €150-200 not even five years ago for a handheld camera with similar resolutions. This is enabled by optics. Getting people to realise this is part of our mission.
The OSA also has committees on public policy and advocacy. We’re trying to educate the political side – the parties that are responsible for funding initiatives – but also
the public to understand that education in jobs in optics and photonics plays a strong part in impacting a country’s gross domestic product. The amount of consumption in the optics and photonics market is vast. Getting in front of government committees and global leaders to get them to think about ways to enhance the education opportunities for students, to bring science in as part of the education at elementary school level, and encourage students to continue in these fields, is really critical for countries’ growth. That’s something that we’re trying to do with our foundation programme and the OSA programmes. It takes global outreach and all our members working together to try and drive these initiatives. Advocacy for education and funding at all levels is critical. We need to continue to push for not cutting science funding when budgets get tight, to look for opportunities to get students into summer intern programmes to help them see what it’s like to work in a government lab, or in industry, or to do research at a university, and that takes funding and outreach. l
Interview by Greg Blackman @electrooptics |
www.electrooptics.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56