Plenary Speakers

University of Bristol

Sir Michael Berry is a theoretical physicist at the University of Bristol, where he has been for more than twice as long as he has not.  His research centres on the relations between physical theories at different levels of description (classical and quantum physics, ray optics and wave optics…). In addition to these deeply mathematical, often geometric, studies, he also delights in finding familiar phenomena illustrating deep concepts – the arcane in the mundane: rainbows, the sparkling of the sun on the sea, twinkling starlight, polarized light in the sky, tidal bores...

Columbia University

Prof. Michal Lipson is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University. She completed her B.S., MS and Ph.D. degrees in Physics at the Technion in 1998 and a Postdoctoral work at MIT in 2001

Lipson pioneered the field of Silicon Photonics, which today is recognized as critical for scaling computing. and is the inventor of over 30 issued patents in this area. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She was also awarded the NAS Comstock Prize in Physics, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Blavatnik Award, the Optical Society’s R. W. Wood Prize, the IEEE Photonics Award. Since 2014 every year she has been named by Thomson Reuters as a top 1% highly cited researcher in the field of Physics. 

Title: Next generation silicon photonics

Abstract: We are now experiencing a revolution in optical technologies: in the past the state of the art in the field of photonics transitioned from individual miniaturized optical devices to massive optical circuits on a microelectronic chip that can be modified on demand. This revolution is ongoing –new materials and technologies are emerging to control the flow of light in unprecedented ways and it  is opening the door to applications that only a decade ago were unimaginable. 

University of Ottawa

Albert Stolow is the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Photonics and Professor of Physics & Chemistry at the University of Ottawa. He founded the Molecular Photonics Group within the National Research Council Canada where he maintains an ongoing collaborative research program. He is Adjunct Professor of Chemistry and of Physics at Queen’s University in Kingston. Stolow is also a Fellow of the Max-Planck-uOttawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics. His research interests include ultrafast molecular dynamics, quantum control, strong field physics of polyatomic molecules, and coherent non-linear optical microscopy.

Albert Stolow studied at Queen’s University and then obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Toronto in 1988, under Nobel Laureate John C. Polanyi. Stolow was an NSERC post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1989-1992 where he worked with Nobel Laureate Yuan T. Lee. In fall 1992, Stolow joined the National Research Council in Ottawa, rising to the position of Group Leader and Principal Research Officer. In 2014, he assumed the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Photonics at the University of Ottawa. Stolow is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society (2008) and the Optical Society of America (2009). He has won several national prizes including the Earle K. Plyler Prize of the American Physical Society, the Polanyi Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (Canada), the Laidler Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, and the Barringer Award of the Spectroscopy Society of Canada. Stolow sits on the editorial boards of numerous international journals and on the Advisory Boards of several international research institutions. Stolow is currently Chair-Elect of the American Physical Society’s Division of Chemical Physics (DCP) and past-Member of the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society’s Division of Laser Science (DLS).