Emerging Platforms, Concepts and Materials for Small(er) Lasers and New Applications of Small Lasers

The meeting will provide an interdisciplinary forum for scientists and engineers from diverse disciplines to explore the development and application of microscopic and nanoscopic lasers, with particular focus on progress in cavity designs, emerging material platforms and biomedical applications.

The specific aims of the conference are (a) to foster scientific exchange among a heterogenous and highly interdisciplinary set of scientists who currently lack suitable platforms for exchange across historically grown and possibly outdated disciplinary boundaries, ranging from fundamental physics, photonics/nano-optics/plasmonics and micro/nanofabrication, to material science and applied photochemistry, and to biophotonics, biomedical engineering and biomedicine; (b) to assess the state of emerging fields, define future directions of research, and to further the growth of a new community; and (c) to promote direct interaction among and between senior and junior faculty, post-doctoral fellows, research scientists, and graduate students while ensuring diversity, including in gender, race, culture and other aspects. As such, the conference will be of interest to people from academic/university laboratories, national labs, clinical institutions, and the broader healthcare sector as well as from the associated industries.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to: (1) emerging material platforms for optical gain and lasing; (2) advances in gain and cavity structure; (3) miniaturization of lasers; (4) ex vivo and in vivo applications and biointegrated lasers; (5) applications of lasers and optical cavities in biomedical sensing; (6) bio-inspired materials and geometries for lasing; (7) platform and technology advances for analyzing large quantities of data, including through AI and machine learning.