Plenary speaker

Ki-Hun Jeong

Plenary speaker
Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST, South Korea

Nanoplasmonic Polymerase Chain Reaction for Point of Care Diagnostics

Ki-Hun Jeong, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST, South Korea. His research focuses on developing advanced optical technologies for biomedical imaging and sensing, including biologically inspired cameras, microspectrometers for continuous biomonitoring, and nanoplasmonic biosensors. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and conducted postdoctoral research in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley.

Prof. Jeong has authored over 100 SCIE journal articles, with publications in Science, Science Advances, Nature Communications, and ACS Nano. His research has led to multiple patents and successful technology transfers, contributing to the commercialization of biomedical imaging and diagnostic tools. He has also co-founded two startups translating his innovations into practical applications.

An internationally recognized scholar, Prof. Jeong has been invited to speak at leading conferences and institutions worldwide. His interdisciplinary approach to next-generation optical systems and biomedical diagnostics continues to drive innovations in miniaturized imaging, lab-on-a-chip technologies, and point-of-care diagnostics.

Website: https://biophotonics.kaist.ac.kr/
Saif Islam

Plenary speaker
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), University of California

AI-Driven Nanophotonic Imaging on a CMOS Platform: Precision, Speed and Miniaturization

Saif Islam received his B.Sc. Degree in Physics from Middle East Technical University, an M.S. in Physics from Bilkent University, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA in 2001. He worked for JDS Uniphase Corp and HP Labs before joining the University of California- Davis in 2004, where he is a Professor and the Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Davis. His research focuses on integrating low-dimensional and nanostructured materials into conventional semiconductor integrated circuits and systems for applications in ultrafast optoelectronics, communication, quantum sensing, AI-enabled imaging, and energy harvesting. Dr. Islam authored or co-authored more than 300 scientific papers, organized 37 conferences as a chair/co-chair, and holds 43 patents as an inventor/co-inventor.

Prof. Islam received the NSF CAREER Award, Outstanding Junior, Outstanding Research Faculty Award of UC Davis Engineering, IEEE Professor of the Year, UC Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award and SPIE’s Aden and Marjorie Meinel Technology Achievement Award. He is a fellow of the IEEE, AAAS, Optica, SPIE, and National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Website: https://faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu/islam/
Suejit Pechprasarn

Plenary speaker
College of Biomedical Engineering, Rangsit University, Thailand

Artificial Intelligence-Based Surface Plasmon Microscopy Towards Single-Molecule Detection

Professor Dr. Suejit Pechprasarn is a distinguished physicist and engineer with expertise in plasmonic microscopy, Fabry-Pérot interferometry, and thin-film technology. His research has significantly advanced high-resolution imaging, optical sensing, and nanophotonics, particularly in biomedical and materials science applications.

He earned a Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Nottingham, UK. He also holds dual B.Eng. degrees: one in Electrical Engineering from Thammasat University, Thailand, and another in Electronic and Computer Engineering (First-Class Honours) from the University of Nottingham, UK. Additionally, he obtained an LLB in Thai Law from Ramkhamhaeng University, Thailand.

Currently, he is a Professor in Physics and serves as the Dean of the Graduate School at Rangsit University, overseeing research and academic development. As Head of the Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence and Supercomputing, he leads projects integrating AI with high-performance computing for scientific and industrial applications.

Beyond academia, Dr. Pechprasarn is a Distinguished Advisor to the Economic Commission of the House of Representatives in Thailand, providing expertise in AI policy, digital transformation, and technological development. In 2025, he was recognized as the winner of the Study UK Alumni Award in Science and Sustainability, honoring his contributions to AI-driven innovation and sustainable technology development.

Angela Dudley

Plenary speaker
University of the Witwatersrand (Physics)

Controlling Exotic Polarisation Structures
 

After receiving her MSc. in Physics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Angela joined the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at the National Laser Centre on a Ph.D. studentship in 2008. Her Ph.D. research involved measurement techniques for optical fields carrying orbital angular momentum. She received her Ph.D. in 2012 and subsequently commenced a Postdoctoral Fellowship followed by a Senior Researcher position at the CSIR. After 10 years at the CSIR, Angela joined the University of the Witwatersrand where she is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Physics department and a research group member of the Structured Light Lab.  Angela’s particular research interests lie in developing novel generation and diagnostic approaches for structured light over a range of powers and wavelengths. Her research has resulted in 35 peer-reviewed journal articles, more than 35 international conference proceedings and 2 international patent.

Website: https://structured-light.org/

Invited speaker

Jae-Woong Jeong

Invited speaker
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Optical Neural Control and Sensing: Soft Optoelectronic Implants for Next-Generation Neural Interfaces

Professor Jae-Woong Jeong obtained M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2008 and 2012, respectively. From 2012 to 2014, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He then spent three years on the faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder, as an Assistant Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering with an affiliate appointment in Materials Science and Engineering. In 2017, Professor Jeong joined Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where he currently serves as KAIST Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research focuses on developing advanced design and fabrication strategies for bio-integrated electronics, with applications in healthcare, neuroscience, and human-machine interfaces. His recent work includes soft wireless neural implants for in vivo optogenetics and neuropharmacology, body-temperature softening wearable and implantable devices, and stretchable microneedle adhesive patches for electrophysiological sensing and exoskeleton robot control. Professor Jeong’s contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the KAIST Transdisciplinary Research Award (2024), the S-Oil Young Scientist Award (2023), recognition as one of the Top 100 Achievements in Korea’s National R&D Projects (2023), and the AMSM Academic Award (2022).

Website: https://www.jeongresearch.org/
Sun-Kyung Kim

Invited speaker
Department of Applied Physics, Kyung Hee University, South Korea

Binary optimization-based photonic applications: from multilayers to digital metasurfaces

Sun-Kyung Kim received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from KAIST in 2000, 2002, and 2006, respectively. From 2006 to 2008, he worked as a Senior Researcher at LG Electronics, followed by a role as Chief Researcher at LG Innotek from 2008 to 2010. He then pursued postdoctoral research in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University from 2010 to 2013. Since 2013, he has been with Kyung Hee University, Korea, where he is currently a Tenured Professor of Applied Physics. His research focuses on high-index-contrast dielectric and metal/dielectric hybrid photonic materials for controlling light absorption, emission, and thermal radiation across the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and microwave spectra. He is also interested in developing optical materials with exceptional dispersion properties based on metamaterials and surface plasmons.

Website: https://npl.khu.ac.kr/
Dawn Tan

Invited speaker
Singapore University of Technology and Design Principal Scientist,
A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics

Nonlinear Photonics on a CMOS chip
 
Dawn Tan is an Associate Professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design and Principal Investigator of the Photonics Devices and Systems Group. She holds a joint appointment as Principal Scientist at the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics. Her group’s research encompasses integrated optics, nonlinear optics and silicon photonics. She was previously a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and part of the design team at Luxtera. She is an Optica Fellow, L’Oréal for Women in Science National Fellow and a National Research Foundation (NRF) Investigator, Class of 2023.
 
Yuki Okamoto

Invited speaker
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

Small Resonant Piezoelectric MEMS Scanner Utilizing a Resonant-Coupling Technique
 

Yuki Okamoto received his B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2015, 2017, and 2020, respectively. He joined the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan, in 2020 and is currently a Senior Researcher at the Sensing System Research Center (SSRC) at AIST.

His research interests focus on CMOS-MEMS sensors and actuators utilizing thin-film piezoelectric actuators. Currently, he is engaged in a research project aimed at developing piezoelectric MEMS, with a particular emphasis on MEMS micromirrors.

Website: https://www.aist.go.jp/index_en.html

Lorenzo Faraone

Invited speaker
School of Engineering, University of Western Australia

MEMS-based technologies for adaptive infrared spectral sensing and imaging
 

Lorenzo Faraone is a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics (FAIP), Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (FIEEE), the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE). He has published more than 300 international journal papers on his research work, and supervised more than 40 PhD student completions. He is currently Head of the Microelectronics Research Group (MRG) at The University of Western Australia (UWA), and Director of the WA Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF). Prior to joining UWA in 1987, he worked primarily in the area of silicon CMOS-based microelectronics and non-volatile memory technology with RCA Labs in Princeton, NJ, USA. Since joining UWA he has worked on compound semiconductor materials and devices, including AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, HgCdTe-based infrared sensor technology and MBE growth, as well as optical MEMS technologies for infrared spectroscopy and imaging applications. His research activities also include mobility spectrum analysis techniques for magneto-transport studies, which allow the transport properties and mobility distributions of individual carriers in multi-layer/multi-carrier semiconductor systems to be determined.

Website: https://www.uwa.edu.au/schools/engineering/microelectronics-research-group

Chloe Doiron

Invited speaker
Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Labs. Rice University. Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States

Unified Framework for Enhancing Chiral Light-Matter Interactions

Chloe Doiron is an Affiliate Scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at Sandia National Laboratories. She earned a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Rice University in 2020. Her research portfolio centers on balancing the trade-offs among materials, design paradigms, and integration strategies to create nanophotonic devices. Her work includes developing novel methods for creating non-Hermitian thermal emitters for thermophotovoltaics, achieving robust pairwise control of polarization and lifetime singularities, identifying and demonstrating new materials for high refractive index all-dielectric metamaterials, and devising new techniques to integrate multiferroic materials into optical devices.

Website: https://cint.lanl.gov/
Kenta Nakazawa

Invited speaker
Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan

Applications of MEMS Mirrors in Imaging and Industrial Measurement
 
Kenta Nakazawa received the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 2015 and 2018, respectively. Since 2018, he has been an assistant professor with department of mechanical engineering, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan. His research interests focus on Optical MEMS and optical/probe imaging. He is also actively involved in exploring microfabrication technologies for creating complex three-dimensional structures.
 

Website: https://tdb.shizuoka.ac.jp/RDB/public/Default2.aspx?id=11255&l=1

Alex Song

Invited speaker
School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Sydney

Scaling of surface-emitting lasers with perturbed Dirac cone
 

Dr. Alex Y. Song is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and, by courtesy, the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The University of Sydney. He conducted postdoctoral research in the E. L. Ginzton Laboratory and the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. He completed his B.S. in Mathematics and Physics and M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University.

Website: https://alexsong.group/

Vladislav V. Yakovlev

Invited speaker
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

Pragmatic approach to applications of metamaterials for biomedical imaging: multi-resonant interactions mediated by metamaterial structures
 

Vladislav V. Yakovlev is a University Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University, with appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Moscow State University in 1990. His research focuses on nanophotonics and biophotonics, especially for biosensing, imaging, and therapeutics. He has published extensively, with over 10,600 citations and an h-index of 57, and has received numerous awards, including the SPIE Harold E. Edgerton Award (2021) and William E. Lamb Medal (2015). Dr. Yakovlev is a Fellow of Optica, SPIE, APS, and AIMBE, and serves on editorial boards such as Advanced Photonics and PhotoniX-Life.

Website: https://engineering.tamu.edu/biomedical/profiles/yakovlev-vladislav-v.html

Hyeon-Ho Jeong

Invited speaker
NanoSystems Laboratory, School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology (GIST)

Disordered plasmonic structures for imaging applications
 
Hyeon-Ho Jeong is an Associate Professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in the Republic of Korea. He received his BEng (2010) and MEng (2011) in Electrical Engineering from Dankook University, Korea. Before pursuing his Ph.D., he worked as a Research Assistant at the Seoul National University Medical Research Centre for one year. He then moved to the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany, with a fully-funded Ph.D. fellowship and obtained his Ph.D. (2017) through the joint Max-Planck-EPFL Centre for Molecular Nanoscience and Technology. In 2018, he joined the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK, as a Research Associate for about 1.5 years. His research spans a wide range of topics, including 3D nanofabrication, micro- and nanorobotics, chirality, plasmonics, and metamaterials.
 

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/nanogist/nanosystems

Daoxin Dai

Invited speaker
College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University

Silicon Photonic MEMS Switches
 
Daoxin Dai received the B. Eng. degree from the Department of Optical Engineering of Zhejiang University in 2000 and obtained his Ph. D. degree from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, in 2005. Currently he is the QIUSHI Distinguished Professor at ZJU and is leading the Silicon Integrated Nanophotonics Group. He has developed multimode silicon photonics and silicon-plus photonics for enabling high-performance photonic devices and large-scale photonic integrated circuits. He has published more than 360 international journal papers at Science, Nature, Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Light: Science & Applications, Optica, Laser & Photonics Reviews, etc. Prof. Dai is one of Most Cited Chinese Researchers (Elsevier) as well as ScholarGPS 0.05% Highly Ranked Scholar (Prior 5 Years). He has given >100 plenary/keynote/tutorial/invited talks at prestigious international conferences. He has severed as a general co-chair of ACP 2022, OECC 2023, etc. Currently Prof. Dai is the Dean of the College of Optical Science and Engineering and the Chair of Optical Society of Zhejiang Province, and he has been elected as Optica (former OSA) Fellow in 2021.  
 

Website: https://person.zju.edu.cn/en/dxdai

Jin Wang

Invited speaker
X-ray Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory

MEMS as Ultrafast X-ray Optics for Manipulating X-ray Pulses with Picosecond Resolution
 

Dr. Jin Wang is an Argonne Distinguished Fellow and a Senior Physicist in the X-ray Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from The Ohio State University. Over the course of his 30-year career at Argonne, he has focused on using synchrotron radiation to investigate dynamical processes in nanocomposite materials, fluids, and soft matter.

Dr. Wang has also been a leader in developing novel X-ray instrumentation that enhances the unique capabilities of Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source and supports the broader synchrotron radiation community. Among these innovations related to the OMN community are ultrafast and dynamic X-ray optics based on MEMS technology, developed in close collaboration with scientists at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Dr. Wang has co-authored 170 peer-reviewed journal articles, delivered over 190 invited talks, holds six patents, and has received numerous awards. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Website: www.aps.anl.gov

Yi-Kuen Lee

Invited speaker
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Hong Kong Center for Construction Robotics Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Advanced CMOS-MEMS Vertical Comb-Actuated Scanning Micromirrors for Next-Generation Photonic Integration for AI data centers using 12-inch 0.18 µm 1P6M CMOS foundry process
 
Prof. Yi-Kuen Lee  received his B.S. and M.S. from National Taiwan University under Prof. Yih-Hsing Pao, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (MEMS) from UCLA in 2001 under Prof. Chih-Ming Ho. He was a Visiting Associate at Caltech in 2011. To date he has authored over 210 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and contributed two book chapters. His current research spans personalized microfluidic elasto-filtration systems for circulating rare-cell diagnostics, micro/nano heat-transfer, and CMOS-MEMS sensors for smart buildings and construction. Prof. Lee served as President of the Hong Kong Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (2014–2016), co-founded the annual IEEE NEMS conference, and has held numerous TPC roles (IEEE MEMS, Transducers, Nano, APCOT). He is Associate Editor for Microfluidics & Nanofluidics and a member of the Executive Committee of HKUST’s HK$300M Center for Construction Robotics.
 

Website: http://meyklee.people.ust.hk