INVITED SPEAKERS

Kyungwon An received his BS and MS in physics from Seoul National University, and his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology working with Michael S. Feld on realizing the first single-atom laser. He stayed at MIT as a postdoc and then a research scientist until 1998. He then moved to Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and stayed there as Professor of Physics until 2001. Since then, he has been Professor of Physics at Seoul National University, performing various experiments on nonclassical field generation in an atom-cavity system as well as quantum chaos and non-Hermitian physics in microcavity lasers. He received Vinci d'Excellence Award in 1995 and Young Scientist Award from the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology in 1999 for the development of the first single-atom laser. He received Atomic and Molecular Physics Award from the Korean Physical Society in 2018, Sung-Do Optical Science Award from the Korean Optical Society as well as National Academy of Sciences Award in 2021 for his work on the coherent single-atom superradiance. Kyungwon An started the WOMA in 2009 and served as co-chair of the second WOMA in 2011.

Prof. Takao Aoki is the head of the Quantum Optics Group at Department of Applied Physics, Waseda University in Japan, and the Chief Scientific Officer at the quantum hardware startup Nanofiber Quantum Technologies, Inc. He earned BEng, MEng, and PhD in Department of Applied Physics, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. His research focuses on quantum technologies based on cavity quantum electrodynamics with optical nanofibers and laser-cooled atoms.

 

Hui Cao is the John C. Malone Professor of Applied Physics, a Professor of Physics, and a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1997.  Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 2008, she was on the faculty of Northwestern University for ten years.  Her technical interests and activities are in the areas of mesoscopic physics, complex photonic materials and devices, nanophotonics, and biophotonics. Cao is a Fellow of IEEE, AAAS, APS and OSA, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Tal Carmon is a full professor at the School of Electrical Engineering at Tel Aviv University. Tal was nominated as a fellow of the Optical Society of America for "impacting optical-interaction sciences by introducing hybrid micro-cavities where light exchanges energy with mechanical vibrations, sound, water waves, or plasma." Tal received his B.Sc. (Cum Laude) degree in Mechanical Engineering and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees (supported by the Eshkol Excellence Fellowship) in Physics from the Israel Institute of Technology. From 2003, Tal was a postdoctoral scholar in Caltech's Applied Physics Department, receiving the "Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship" and the "Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Center for the Physics of Information." In 2007, Tal joined the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor, received the Air Force Young Faculty Award, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2013. Tal then returned to his Alma Mater at the Technion. In 2020, Tal moved to the School of Electrical Engineering at Tel Aviv University.

Yanne K. Chembo received a Ph.D. in nonlinear dynamics from the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon (2001-2005), and a Ph.D. degree in photonics from the University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain (2002-2006). He has been a postdoctoral fellow at CNRS in France (2007-2009), and at the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Lab in California (2009-2010). He was a Research Director for the CNRS in France before joining the University of Maryland in 2019, where is currently Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Director of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP). He is a Fellow of SPIE, OPTICA and APS.

Miro was born and educated in Finland, obtaining the degree of Doctor of Science in Technology in 2012. He has been working at The University of Auckland in New Zealand since 2012 in various roles. He is currently an Associate Professor in Physics, conducting experimental and theoretical research on coherently driven nonlinear optical resonators.

Li Ge received his PhD in Physics from Yale University in 2010, with his thesis focusing on laser physics in complex and disordered media, including wave-chaotic lasers and random lasers. Before joining the City University of New York in 2013, he was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. His current research interests include nonlinear and non-Hermitian phenomena in optics and photonics. Li Ge has published more than 150 journal articles and conference proceedings in top scientific journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Photonics, and PRL, with a total citation of over 10000 with an h-index of 43. He has been on the editorial boards and/or a guest editor for PRB, Photonics Research, APL, and PNAS. He is a Fellow of Optica since 2024. 

Takahisa Harayama is a Professor of Applied Physics at Waseda University. He was Head of Department of Nonlinear Science at ATR Wave Engineering Research Laboratories, where he started his study on chaotic billiard lasers theoretically and experimentally.

Prof. Martina Hentschel holds a professorship for Theoretical Physics of Complex Dynamical Systems at TU Chemnitz, Germany, performing research on mesoscopic physics in optical and condensed matter systems such as microresonators and graphene. After studying physics in Dresden and London, she obtained her PhD in 2001, followed by Postdocs at Duke University, Regensburg University, and at ATR Labs Kyoto. From 2006 to 2012 she was leading an Emmy-Noether research group at MPIPKS Dresden and was appointed a professor for Theoretical Physics at TU Ilmenau from 2012 to 2020, when she moved to Chemnitz.

Beibei Li is a Professor at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). She obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Tianjin University in 2009 and Ph.D degree from Peking University in 2014. Following this, she pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Queensland in Australia from 2014 to 2018. Since October 2018, she has been working at the Institute of Physics, CAS. Dr. Li’s research primarily focuses on high-quality optical microcavities and their applications in precision sensing and nonlinear optics, ranging from ultrasound sensing, magnetometry, Brillouin lasers, and microcomb, etc. She has published over 40 papers, which have been cited more than 2700 times. In addition, Dr. Li has been invited to serve as an assistant editor for Photonics Research, The Innovation, and Photonic Sensors, as well as a reviewer for various journals. In recognition of her achievements, she was awarded the “Raoyutai fundamental Optics Prize” and received the “Excellent Young Scientist fund of NSFC” in 2022.

Guoping Lin, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the School of Science, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen). He received his bachelor's from Xiamen University and joint doctoral degrees in optics and physics from Xiamen University and École Normale Supérieure of Paris in 2010. He conducted four years of postdoctoral research at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and FEMTO-ST Institute in France. He then joined Huazhong University of Science and Technology, contributing to laser system development for future space-based gravitational wave detection for four years. His research interests lie in nonlinear optical frequency conversion and light-matter interactions exploiting crystalline high-Q whispering gallery mode resonators. 

Síle Nic Chormaic (Professor) holds a BSc (Hons) in Experimental and Mathematical Physics, and an MSc by Research in Atomic Physics from Maynooth University, Ireland.  In 1994 she was awarded a PhD on atomic interferometry from the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord.  Subsequently, she held postdoctoral positions in Austria, Australia, and Germany.   She returned to Ireland in 2000 for a faculty post at Cork Institute of Technology.   In 2006, she transferred to University College Cork.  Since 2012 she has been at OIST Graduate University, Japan, where she leads the Light-Matter Interactions for Quantum Technologies Unit.  She is recognized for her work on optical nanofibres and other micro- and nanostructured devices for a variety of applications including fundamental studies with cold atoms, novel atom trapping schemes, microscopic and nanoscopic particle manipulation, complex optical mode propagation in nanofibres, and whispering gallery resonators for sensing and nonlinear optics.      During her career she has received several awards including an EU Science Bursary, an Austrian Science Foundation Lise Meitner Fellowship, and a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator Award. She is a Fellow of Optica and the Institute of Physics.  In her spare time, she walks or cycles the roads of Okinawa.  

Dr. Scott B. Papp is Group Leader of Quantum and Nonlinear Nanophotonic Systems (QNS) at NIST and Lecturer at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He received a Ph.D in 2008 from University of Colorado for experiments on long-sought beyond mean-field physics in Bose-Einstein condensates. From 2008-2010 he worked at Caltech as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Physics of Information on atomic ensemble quantum memories and multipartite entanglement. At NIST, he has developed microresonator frequency combs, integrated photonics platforms and devices, electro-optic combs, and numerous application demonstrations.

Keiji Sasaki is a Professor Emeritus of Research Institute for Electronic Science (RIES), Hokkaido University. He received PhD degree in Applied Physics from Osaka University in 1986. He held a Professor position of RIES since 1997 and worked as a Director of RIES (2005-2009) and a Head of Nanotechnology Research Center (2009-2015). His research interests are in nanophotonic, plasmonics and quantum optics. He is the General Chair of the 4th International Workshop on Microcavities and Their Applications (WOMA2015), Sapporo, Japan. 

Kerry Vahala is Professor of Applied Physics at Caltech and holds the Jenkins Chair in Information Science and Technology. His research on chip-based high-Q optical resonators and related nonlinear optical devices has advanced miniature frequency and time systems, microwave sources, parametric oscillators, astrocombs and gyroscopes. Vahala also made early contributions to the subject of cavity optomechanics and demonstrations of chip-based devices to cavity QED phenomena. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the IEEE and Optica, he received the IEEE Sarnoff Medal for research on quantum-well laser dynamics, the Alexander von Humboldt award and MPQ Distinguished Scholar Award for work on ultra-high-Q optical microcavities, a NASA achievement award for application of microcombs to exoplanet detection, and the Optica Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award for a 2-photon optical clock. Vahala is also the Executive Officer of the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech.

Dr. Jan Wiersig is a full professor of theoretical physics at Otto-von-Guericke-
Universität Magdeburg, Germany. He received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from Universität Bremen in 1998. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow of theoretical physics at Queen Mary and Westfield college (London), MPI für Physik komplexer systeme (Dresden) and Universität Bremen from 1998-2008. He has 157 peer-reviewed publications in PRL, Nature, PNAS, etc. Since 2023 he is a fellow of Optica (formerly OSA). His research interests include quantum optics, wave chaos and non-Hermitian effects in optical systems, and light-matter interaction in semiconductor micro- and nanostructures

Prof. Andrew Wing On Poon received his B.A. (Hons.) degree from The University of Chicago, Illinois, USA in 1995, and his M. Phil and Ph. D. degrees from Yale University, Connecticut, USA, in 1998 and 2001, all in Physics.  In 2001, he joined the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as an assistant professor.  Since then, he has risen through the ranks and is now a professor.  Since 2002, Prof. Poon and his students at HKUST have been spearheading diverse research directions in optical microcavities leveraging wafer-level silicon nanofabrication processes.  The Poon group is among the early players of the now global silicon photonics community in academia and industry.  He is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.  He is the General Chair of the 6th International Workshop on Microcavities and Their Applications (WOMA) 2022, Hong Kong.   In 2022, Prof Poon was elected a Fellow of Optica.

Qifan Yang received his B. Sc in Physics from Peking University in 2013, and Ph. D. in Applied Physics from Caltech in 2019. He worked as a postdoctoral scholar in Caltech before he joined School of Physics, Peking University in 2020, where he is presently an assistant professor in Physics. His research interests span integrated photonics and nonlinear optics to high-Q microresonators and optical frequency combs.