Special Symposia

Special Symposium on Advances in Neurophotonics 

The use of optical methods for neuroimaging, has significantly increased in the last decade and plays a key role in understanding the brain functionality. Advanced Neurophotonics technologies provide an opportunity to sense the central nervous system at the point-of-care. The special symposium Advances in Neurophotonics will bring together researchers from all aspects of optics to discuss emerging techniques and their impact on neuroscience applications. The committee solicits papers and presentations spans from intracellular super-resolution imaging to functional imaging for understating the cognitive mechanisms of the brain.

Notably, this session includes development and applications of:

• Noninvasive functional neuroimaging studies under natural (ecologically valid) conditions via the following techniques:
  • Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).
  • Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS).
  • Speckle-based sensing.
  • Functional ultrasound imaging of the brain.

• Neuroimaging studies of the eye-brain network. 
  • Optical interferometric detection of neural activity and dynamics of cellular metabolism.
  • Functional Optical Coherence Tomography such as Optical Coherence Elastography (OCE), spectroscopic OCT (SOCT), and molecular imaging OCT.

• Super-resolution methods.
  • Structured illumination imaging in the living brain.
  • Quantum super-resolution.
  • Deep brain imaging via multiphoton microscopy.

• Applications of machine deep learning for clinical and functional neuroimaging.
• Photoacoustic methods for neuroimaging.
• Optogenetics tools for cellular manipulations.

Special Symposium on Quantum Photonic Materials and Devices for Quantum Computing

Building a scalable quantum processor and distributed quantum computing network using various platforms requires integrated photonic devices including, but not limited to, efficient sources of quantum light, on-chip phase modulators, integrated light delivery on-chip, on-chip atom traps, microwave-to-optical transducers, integrated single-photon detectors, and more.

   The symposium will seek contributions on the following topics: 

• Single-photon, entangled and cluster-state generation suitable for quantum computing
• Novel quantum photonic materials including, but not limited to, Lithium Niobate, SiC, rare-earth crystals, and Diamond for quantum computing and transduction
• Heterogeneous integration of quantum photonic devices for on-chip detection, modulation, storage, and state preparation.
• Cryogenic circuitry for the control of quantum optical chips (clocking, synchronization, feed-forward operations, processing of quantum measurements, etc.)