Photonics for a Better World

Kerstin Bailey, the marketing analytics manager for SPIE, has a word of encouragement for optics and photonics professionals working in the defense sector, to counter recent nerve-wracking news about the U.S. budget sequester. "From the information I see about our community, optics and photonics defense professionals should not be overly worried about long-term employability," she said. "While these professionals work in defense, we have seen that their interests and backgrounds cover many application areas. Their activity with SPIE indicates a broad knowledge base that is very transferrable," Bailey said. Examples of technology transfer from the defense sector to commercial use are abundant. Adaptive optics for telescopes are used in opthalmology. Sensing technologies used by the military can ensure food safety and clean water for the general public. The technology that runs the Internet, GPS systems, and microwave ovens has its roots in defense resear...

Those eyes in the sky are seeing plenty. Researchers are finding more and more ways to use that data to solve the world’s great challenges and even save lives. An article in the latest issue of The Scientist detailed several recent projects. Among them: “With funding from NASA, Frank Muller-Karger, director of the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing at the University of South Florida, and his colleagues purchased more than 1,400 Landsat 7 images acquired between 1999 and 2003 in order to outline and classify the world’s shallow-reef ecosystems. Completed in 2007, the Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project produced the first uniform map of all the coral reefs around the world at a 30-meter-pixel resolution. The United Nations’ World Conservation Monitoring Centre is now refining the map in order to use it for global conservation efforts.” The information the team has gathered is also useful for fish and wildlife managers and others with interests in monitoring ocean water quality....

“Multidisciplinary” is a word heard often in photonics circles. It has become increasingly apt at SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS), where, in the words of Michael Eismann (Air Force Research Lab), last year’s symposium chair, you’ll see things that you won’t find anywhere else. Just a few examples -- from among 2,400 papers in the program -- illustrate the span across not only several disciplines but varied application areas as well. Cancer and brain trauma From the growing body of presentations at DSS on biomedicine and sensing technologies with health applications is a paper by Krzysztof Ptak (U.S. National Cancer Institute Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives) on nanotechnology as a “new pipeline” for cancer diagnostics, imaging agents, and therapies (8031-63). “The National Cancer Institute has taken the bold and visionary step of recognizing that it takes a multidisciplinary approach allowing for a convergence of molecular biology, oncology, physics, chem...

Photonics and optics continue to provide amazing new solutions for challenges such as better healthcare, new green energy sources and devices, and more efficient and capable manufacturing processes. Every week, the SPIE Newsroom publishes several new reports from researchers about their latest work. Here’s a list (with links to the full articles) of just a few of the life-enhancing photonics advances reported this year from around the world. FIFA live in 3D at the pub and in your living room For the first time ever, this year’s World Cup audiences were able to watch some of the matches in real-time 3D without having to buy a ticket. The Federation International Football Association worked with Sony and its production partners to deliver two dozen of the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches held in South Africa, and several sports broadcast television stations in Australia, the UK, and the US broadcast matches in 3D as well. Gooooooaaaaal! Moth’s eye suggests solution for solar and LED re...