Dr Eugene Arthurs has announced he is to retire as CEO of SPIE on 19 January 2018. Arthurs has spent 18 years employed by the society for optics and photonics

A group advocating photonics with the UK government has emphasised the wide-ranging and innovation-driving role of light-based technologies – and the need for workforce training in the field – at its recent meeting in London

Ken Hanson, a medical imaging research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and Brian Lula, president of Physik Instrumente USA, have been selected as this year’s recipients of two top awards from SPIE

Differences of opinion still exist when it comes to fair pay and promotion in optics and photonics fields, but job satisfaction remains high overall, according to the 2017 SPIE Optics and Photonics Global Salary Report. 

The report, the seventh compiled annually by SPIE, is the largest international study of the photonics industry.

Laser-activated gene therapy nanodevices developed by Harvard University spin-off Cellino Biotech came first place in the 2017 SPIE Startup Challenge, held at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco at the start of the month

Nine new products providing valuable new capabilities in detecting disease, assessing water or food quality, and enabling advanced precision manufacturing have been named winners of the 2017 Prism Awards for Photonics Innovation

On 31 January, leaders of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, wrote a letter to United States President Donald Trump addressing the executive order banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries. Although currently suspended, the ban resulted in several scientists - including conference speakers - not being able to attend Photonics West

The US BRAIN initiative is likely to continue to receive funding under the new Trump administration, Edmund Talley from the NIH told a neurotechnologies plenary session at SPIE Photonics West