Plenary Speakers

Plenary Talk I:  “Retrospective View on Lasers and Fibre Lasers—a Contrasting Comparison of Evolution and Growth”

Prof. David Payne, Optoelectronics Research Centre, Southampton University

Speaker’s Bio

Professor David Neil Payne is the current Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton.

Over the last forty years, he has made several significant contributions in optical fiber communications and his work has had an impact on telecommunications and laser technology. Payne’s work spans diverse areas of photonics, from telecommunications and optical sensors to nanophotonics and optical materials.

Payne’s early work in fiber fabrication in the 1970s resulted in many of the specialty fibers used today. He led the team at Southampton that invented the erbium-doped fiber amplifier. Payne also pioneered fiber lasers and led the teams that invented the singlemode silica fiber laser, breaking—at the time—the kilowatt barrier for the output of a fiber laser. Since then he has made discoveries which have contributed to the growth of fiber lasers for use in manufacturing and defense.

Dr. Payne has published over 600 Conference and Journal papers. He is inventor and co-inventor on over 20 patents and applications. Dr. Payne is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has received the UK Rank Prize for Optics, the prestigious US Tyndall Award (1991) and the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Engineering (1998). He is also an Eduard Rhein Laureate (Germany). In 2001 Payne was awarded the Mountbatten Medal of the IEE (2001) and the Kelvin Medal of the eight major engineering institutions for distinction in the application of science to engineering (2004). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) awarded David the prestigious 2007 Photonics Award for outstanding achievements in photonic. Most recently he was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In addition to his Academic achievements, Prof. Payne founded York Technologies (now PK Technology Inc.) and SPI Lasers PLC, a leading supplier of high power fiber lasers located at Hedge End, Southampton, which has been purchased by the Trumpf Corporation of Germany.

Plenary Talk II: “Photonic Crystal Fibers: Science & Applications ”
Dr. Ole Bang, DTU Fotonik, Dept. of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark

Speaker’s Bio
Dr. Ole Bang is Head of the Fiber Sensors & Supercontinum Group at DTU Fotonik, Department of Photonics Engineering, at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). He holds a M.Sc in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. Degree in nonlinear science, both from the Technical University of. He has since 1999 been employed at the Technical University of Denmark, where in 2004 he joined DTU Fotonik in a permanent position as Head of Group. He soon thereafter acquired the only university-based draw tower in Denmark, using which his group fabricates polymer Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCFs) and just recently softglass PCFs, and apply them to sensing, pulse compression, and supercontinuum light sources. Ole Bang serves as a referee on several international journals and is on the Editorial Board of the journal “Advances in Nonlinear Optics”. He has been supervising more than 21 Ph.D projects, 6 of them in collaboration with Danish industry. He has been the editor of 1 book and the author of 5 book chapters, more than 110 international journal papers, and more than 170 international conference papers. Ole Bang’s work has received more than 2342 ISI citations, giving him an h-index of 29. In 1995 Ole Bang received the Talent Award by the Danish Research Councils and in 2001 he received the Jorck’s Prize by the Danish Supreme Court for his research in nonlinear optics.

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