The IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) held it’s 13th Annual Meeting at the Westin Rio Mar Beach Resort in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico this year, the first time that LEOS has ventured to conduct its Annual Meeting off the North American continent. The November 13-16th event was a grand success with 737 total registered attendees and nearly 500 technical presentations, including 311 contributed presentations, delivered during the course of the meeting. The 4-day program provided for extensive, in-depth coverage of the latest and most significant developments in all aspects of optoelectronic and photonic materials, devices, and systems. Along with the technical program, 19-exhibitors highlighted their products at the meeting as they hosted the coffee breaks.
The meeting was launched on Monday morning with a welcome from Conference Chair, Del Owyoung and Program Chair Katie Hall. As in past years, three plenary speakers, reflecting the geographical diversity of LEOS membership from Asia/Pacific, Americas, and Europe, kicked off the technical program. This year, the diversity of LEOS technical interests from optoelectronic and photonic devices, to components, to subsystems was also reflected in the plenaries. The program was led off by Hiromichi Shinohara of NTT, who described the evolution of “Fiber Optic Communication Systems in Japan”. The deployment of commercial fiber-optic systems in Japan was traced from its origin in 1983 to the present and plans for advanced fiber-optic networks described. Fred Leonberger of JDS Uniphase spoke on the “Rapid Advances in Commercial Optoeletronic Components and Modules for DWDM Systems”, describing the critical role played by volume manufacturing capabilities in the rapid deployment of wide-bandwith DWDM systems. Technology and product directions were predicted to move increasingly toward module-level solutions with increasing functionality. The final presentation on “VCSELs: Prospects and Challenges for Optical Interconnects” was delivered by Karl Ebeling from the University of Ulm who examined the current applications and future needs for VCSEL technology in telecomm and datacom systems.
New to LEOS this year was a grand Conference/Awards reception on Monday evening. Gordon Day, LEOS President, recognized IEEE Millennium Medal winners, LEOS Distinguished Lecturers, LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship recipients and LEOS Best Student Paper Award winners. Milton Chang, Katie Hall, H. Scott Hinton, and Robert Lang, retiring from the LEOS Board of Governors this year, were also recognized.
Also recognized at the reception were Mel Cohen (LEOS Distinguished Service Award), Pallab Bhattacharya, Leda Lunardi, and Sethumadhavan Chandrasekher (LEOS Engineering Achievement Award), Greg Olsen (LEOS Aron Kressel Award), and James Coleman (William Steifer Award for Scientific Achievement Award).
In addition to the regular technical sessions, four special symposia focused attention on topics of particular current interest to the LEOS membership. A symposium on 10-Gigabit Ethernet examined progress and plans for the deployment of this network interconnect technology. A symposium on broadband access networks examined the status and prospects for DWDM in broadband access. Lasers in Medicine and Biology again provided a program of invited presentations where recent innovations in optical technology are finding applications to health. Finally, a special symposium on Microwave Photonics addressed the role that photonics is having in high/speed/high frequency electronic applications.
Next year, LEOS’01 will convene at the La Jolla Hyatt Regency in San Diego, California, November 12-15th, under the guidance of Conference Chair, Christoph Harder and Program Chair, Chung-En Zah. Be sure to begin making your plans now for what promises to be another stimulating and productive experience.