Prominent Plenary Speakers at the World of Photonics Congress

Prof. Karsten Danzmann is director at Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) and head of the division Laser Interferometry and Gravitational Wave Astronomy. He is Director of the Institute of Gravitation Physics at Leibniz Universität Hannover.

Prof. Danzmann is one of the most important scientists in the study of gravitational waves: His groundbreaking work has enabled the direct detection of gravitational waves, thus ushering in a new era of astrophysical research. For his merits he was honoured with the Edison Volta Prize of the European Physical Society and the Stern-Gerlach Medal of the German Physical Society (DPG) in 2018.

Karsten Danzmann has already been presented with the Fritz Behrens Foundation Science Prize 2016, the Lower Saxony Science Award 2016, the Körber European Science Prize 2017, and the Otto Hahn Prize 2017. As a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration he was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Gruber Cosmology Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Award.

Prof. Michal Lipson, Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University, is one of the main pioneers in the field of silicon photonics. Among many of her discoveries she has demonstrated the first silicon photonics GHz modulator for transmitting electronic signals over large distances with low power. Today silicon photonics is being commercialized extensively.

Lipson’s research focuses on areas where nanophotonics has a big impact, both fundamentally and technologically. Her main areas of research include novel photonic materials and fabrication, silicon photonics and non-reciprocity, nano-magnetism and thermal control, nanophotonics for neuroscience, optomechanics, nonlinear and quantum optics, and sensing and optofluidics.

Professor Lipson's honors and awards include the MacArthur Fellow, Blavatnik Award, IBM Faculty Award, and the NSF Early Career Award. She been named the recipient of the 2019 IEEE Photonics Award for her outstanding achievements in photonics.

Prof. Anton Zeilinger is a Research Group Leader at Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information – Vienna (IQOQI Vienna), Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Vienna and President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Anton Zeilinger’s achievements have been most succinctly described in his citation for the inaugural Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics (UK): “For his pioneering conceptual and experimental contributions to the foundations of quantum physics, which have become the cornerstone for the rapidly–evolving field of quantum information.”

A visionary quantum physicist and a pioneer of quantum information science and technology, Anton Zeilinger, has helped to shape a future of quantum technologies that is just now taking form. He has performed many groundbreaking experiments in quantum mechanics, from important fundamental tests all the way to innovative applications. Most of his research concerns the fundamental aspects and applications of quantum entanglement.

Among his many awards and prizes are the German Order Pour le Mérite, the Order of Merit of Austria, the Wolf Prize (Israel), the Inaugural Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics and the King Faisal Prize.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 was awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland. Strickland und Mourou received the award “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”.

Prof. Gérard Mourou was the founding Director of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan. For forty years, he has pioneered the field of ultrafast lasers and their applications in scientific, engineering and medical disciplines. He is also the initiator of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) in Europe. He is a fellow of The Optical Society and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Prof. Mourou is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Currently he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the University of Michigan and the Ecole polytechnique in Palaiseau France.

He has been the recipient of the Wood Prize from The Optical Society, the Edgerton Prize from the SPIE, the Sarnoff Prize from the IEEE, the 2004 IEEE/LEOS Quantum Electronics Award, 2005 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, the 2009 Charles Hard Townes Award, te 2016 Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis and the 2016 Frederic Ives Meda./Jarus Quinn Prize.

Prof. Sir Peter Knight, Senior Fellow in Residence, Kavli Royal Society International Centre, U.K., is a physicist renowned for pioneering research into quantum optics. His 40 years of work on the nonclassical properties of light and the theoretical underpinnings of quantum computing have established him as an influential figure within the wider UK physics community.

Knight is also professor and senior research investigator in the physics department at Imperial College, and chair of the Quantum Metrology Institute, National Physical Laboratory, both in the U.K. Additionally he was head of the Optical Society of America, president of the Institute of Physics, and initiated the European Quantum Optics Conferences together with Herbert Walther, starting point for the European quantum optics and quantum information, which nowadays is well established.

After his doctorate at Sussex University, Sir Peter joined the group of Joe Eberly as a Research Associate from 1972-1974 in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Rochester and at the Physics Department and SLAC, Stanford University, USA, followed by a period as SRC Research Fellow 1974-1976 at Sussex University; and in 1976 was Visiting Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.

Prof. Richard Leach is currently a professor in metrology at the University of Nottingham and prior to this spent 25 years at the National Physical Laboratory. He obtained a BSc in Applied Physics from Kingston University in 1989, an MSc in Industrial Measurement Systems from Brunel University in 1994, a PhD in Surface Metrology from University of Warwick in 2000 and a DSc from Warwick in 2014.

Prof. Leach is on the Council of the European Society of Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology, the Board of Directors of the American Society of Precision Engineering (2014-2016), the EPSRC Peer Review College, the International Committee on Measurements and Instrumentation and several international standards committees. He is the European Editor-in-Chief for Precision Engineering and the founder of the new Institute of Physics journal: Surface Topography: Metrology & Properties. He has over 390 publications including five textbooks. Leach is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Engineering & Technology, the Institute of Measurement & Control, the International Society of Nanomanufacturing, a Sustained Member of the American Society of Precision Engineering, a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Physicist. He is a visiting professor at Loughborough University and the Harbin Institute of Technology.