Research

Ahead of chairing the AR/VR/MR industry days at SPIE Photonics West, Microsoft’s Bernard Kress considers the optimal way of designing optics for augmented and mixed reality headsets

Professor David Andrews, incoming 2019 vice-president of SPIE, describes the support, growth and promise of some rapidly emerging quantum applications

In a follow-up to her piece in our last issue, Liz Gerrish, technical programme manager and senior optical engineer at Wilcox Industries, provides further leadership perspective from being a woman in STEM

Various lidar companies are finding ways to meet the huge challenges automotive applications present. Jessica Rowbury discovers Luminar’s approach, and decisions made in designing their system

Simon Andrews, executive director of Fraunhofer UK Research, believes the excitement surrounding automotive lidar will ultimately bring benefits to many other sectors

Professor Dr Martin Roth, at research centre Innofspec Potsdam, discusses the role that fibre Bragg gratings and other photonics components could play in transforming astronomy

Dr Katherine Bakeev at B&W Tek discusses the use of Raman spectroscopy in the pharma industry, following the opening of a centre in Hyderabad, India, to cater for the market

Matthew Dale reports from the European Photonic Industry Consortium’s Executive Meeting on Industrial Lasers, where it was explained how CO­2 lasers could be used to produce the next generation of computer processors

Dr Sujatha Ramanujan, MD of photonics accelerator Luminate, discusses the investment trends for optical innovations

With demand already present, Dr Paul Gow, research fellow at the Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, highlights the importance of getting quantum technology out of the lab