OPTICSSUMMIT2027

Karsten König is Full Professor and Head of the Department of Biophotonics and Laser Technologies at the Saarland University. He gained the PhD degree in physics and habilitation degree in cell biology from the University Jena. Karsten Koenig is also founder and president of the companies JenLab GmbH in Berlin/Germany and Multiphoton Laser Technologies Inc. in California. Prof. Karsten Koenig published about 500 scientific papers (e.g. in Nature) in the field of biophotonics and laser material machining. He pioneered fluorescence lifetime imaging, femtosecond laser nanoprocessing including laser transfection, as well as clinical multiphoton tomography and high-resolution optical skin biopsies.

Dr. Young-Kai (Y. K.) Chen is Deputy Chief Technology Officer at Coherent Corporation, andvisiting professor at Cornell University and UCLA. He was a Program Manager at DARPA from September 2017 to September 2021. Before joined DARPA in 2017, he was a Senior Director at Nokia Bell Labs. Dr. Chen and his teams contributed to development of integrated lasers, silicon photonics ICs, photonic processing, wireless backhauls, and 100G coherent optic data links. Dr. Chen is a Fellow of Bell Labs, IEEE,Optica, a member of National Academy of Engineering, and Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

Y. Fainman is a Cymer Professor of Advanced Optical Technologies and Distinguished Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) where he is currently Chair of the ECE Department. He is directing research of the Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics group at UCSD and made significant contributions to near field optical phenomena, inhomogeneous and meta-materials, nanophotonics and plasmonics, and non-conventional imaging. The research applications target information technologies and biomedical sensing. His current research interests are in near field optical science and technology. He contributed over 250 manuscripts in peer review journals and over 450 conference presentations and conference proceedings. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Fellow of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, and a recipient of the Miriam and Aharon Gutvirt Prize, Lady Davis Fellowship, Brown Award, Gabor Award and Emmett N. Leith Medal.

Prof. Dr. Miroslav D. Dramićanin earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Belgrade and has held notable positions including Full Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Belgrade and Head of the Department for Radiation Chemistry and Physics at Vinča Institute. He currently serves as Associate Editor for Optical Materials, and is a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. His research centers on luminescent spectroscopy and materials science, with a focus on luminescence thermometry and nanomaterials for advanced optical applications. Prof. Dramićanin has authored one book, nine book chapters, and nearly 390 peer-reviewed publications, with approximately 18,500 citations and an h-index of 65, according to Google Scholar. He is the winner of the Galileo Galilei Award for 2025 from the International Commission for Optics. Additionally, he is recognized on Stanford University’s list of the world’s most influential scientists.