EOSAM 2021 bringing people together again in-person
- On Wednesday, 01 december 2021
The European Optical Society Annual Meeting, EOSAM, is a major international scientific conference covering all aspects of optics and photonics. It is attended by top researchers, key leaders, students, and industry experts. Each year EOSAM moves into different optics hubs better serving the local communities and at each time creating a unique EOSAM experience for the attendees. EOSAM was previously organized in France, Scotland, Germany, Netherlands, and was also planned for Portugal but was held online due to the pandemic.
This year, EOSAM was held on September 13-17 in Rome Italy, bringing back the highly awaited international in-person EOS events. EOS organized the conference in close co-operation with the Societa Italiana di Ottica e Fotonica, SIOF, the Italian optical society Branch member of EOS, and the Universita di Roma La Sapienza. For the first time, EOSAM was held in a hybrid format, successfully mixing online attendees with on-site participants. With over 350 onsite attendees and 180 online attendees, from 33 countries worldwide, this hybrid format was a full success and worth to be repeated in the future!
Onsite participants benefited from an exceptional venue. The meeting was held in the premises of Universita di Roma La Sapienza, in the center of Roma. The conference rooms surrounded the old cloister open onto an inner courtyard. The cloister arcades welcomed an industrial exhibit of 14 booths, the poster sessions, the welcome reception, the numerous coffee breaks, and the everyday lunches. All these activities reinforced the exchanges between the attendants. EOS indeed pays a special attention to the interaction between participants by promoting networking opportunities. One of the nicest was the memorable gala dinner served in the century-old rooms of the Centro Palazzo Rospigliosi conference center.
The quality of the conference was served by the quality of the scientific presentations, 445 in total. These presentations were shared among topical meetings, TOM, and sessions covering most fields of optics and photonics:
TOM 1 - Silicon Photonics and Guided-Wave Optics
TOM 2 - Computational, Adaptive and Freeform Optics
TOM 3 - Optical System Design, Tolerancing and Manufacturing
TOM 4 - Bio-Medical Optics
TOM 5 - Resonant Nanophotonics
TOM 6 - Optical Materials: crystals, thin films, organic molecules and polymers, syntheses, characterization and devices
TOM 7 - Thermal radiation and energy management
TOM 8 - Nonlinear and Quantum Optics
TOM 9 - Optics at Nanoscale (ONS)
TOM 10 - Optical Microsystems (OMS)
TOM 11 - Waves in Complex Photonic Media
TOM 12 - Optofluidics
TOM 13 - Ultrafast Optical Technologies and Applications
TOM 14 - Advances and Applications of Optics and Photonics
EU Project Session
Early Stage Researcher Session organised by SIOF
Grand Challenges of Photonics Session
Recognitions of scientific works at all stages of scientific career are always stirring moments. EOSAM is no exception:
The opening ceremony started with the ICO award ceremony. The Prize winner, M. Guizar-Sicairos, gave an exciting plenary talk entitled “Harnessing coherence and computational imaging for nanoscale structure characterization using X-rays”.
Several student prizes, corresponding to different Topical Meetings, we also awarded during the closing ceremony.
- The best student poster presentation (sponsored by Zeiss): Tunable and polarization-insensitive metamaterial absorber in the visible spectrum by Benjamin Asamoah (University of Eastern Finland)
- The best student presentation (sponsored by EOS): 100-W, 100-MW, 50-fs thin-disk laser oscillator based on Yb:YAG by Jakub Drs (University of Neuchâtel)
- The best student presentation (sponsored by Evatec): Spontaneous photon pair generation in nonlinear metasurfaces by Tomás Santiago-Cruz (Max Plank Institute for the Science of Light)
- The best student presentation (sponsored by Buhler): In-vivo fabrication of bioelectronic interface via polymerization of conjugated oligomers by Giuseppina Tommasini (Instituto di Scienze Applicate e Sistemi Intelligenti & Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche)
- The best student presentation (sponsored by RhySearch): Ultra-broadband stochastic resonance of light enabled by memory effects in the nonlinear response by Kevin Peters (AMOLF)
- The best student presentation (sponsored by Nikon): Tuning photothermal dynamics in gold nanoparticle-loaded agarose gel for plasmon-enhanced drug release by Andrea Schirato (Politecnico di Milano & Italian Institute of Technology)
- The best student presentation (sponsored by ICO): Sub-light-cycle control of relativistic plasma-mirrors by Marie Ouillé (Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée)
EOSAM 2021 was a memorable event made possible by the involvement of a whole community. EOS would like to give special thanks to the local EOSAM chairs, Concita Sibilia and Alessandro Belardini, the Topical meeting chairs, and all the attendees and speakers who contributed to such a friendly and warm atmosphere. EOS also deeply thanks the EOSAM 2021 sponsors who greatly contributed to the quality of the meeting: Optoprim, Fastlite, NKT Photonics, Toptica Photonics, Optoman, Fluence Technology, Activefiber Systems, American Elements, A.P.E, GLOPhotonics, Bühler, ICO, Nikon, RhySearch, SIOF, Trumpf, UniNe, Zurich Instrument, FemtoEasy, Thorlabs, WZWOpticag, Layertec, Evatec, Zeiss.
EOSAM is the European yearly event that brings together the photonics community. Don’t miss the next EOSAM in September 2022 to find out about the latest advances in optics and photonics in a convivial atmosphere.
As autumn is here, it is nice to reminisce the warm atmosphere in Rome at EOSAM, what a week it was! - check the photos