The 2012 CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Awards program is designed to honor the most timely, groundbreaking products in the field of photonics and laser science. The awards are sponsored by Laser Focus World and the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO).

Most optical engineers can adequately perform their engineering tasks by assuming that the light propagating through their systems is either totally spatially incoherent or coherent.

Washington, DC--Next year's Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), held annually in San Jose, CA, will take place in June rather than its usual May, moving to June 9–14, 2013.

Brussels, Belgium--Ghent University and Imec have launched an open-source photonics software platform called IPKISS, which is a generic and modular software framework for parametric design of photonic integrated components and circuits.

Lichtenfels, Germany--Laser cusing or fusing techniques are being used to create dentures at half the cost of milled versions.

Burlington, MA--Comsol has opened a new technical sales and support office in the center of Berlin, as the area is home to research institutes such as Fraunhofer, Leibniz, Max Planck, and the scientific, technical, and biomedical research centers of the Helmholtz Association.

Washington, DC--BioPhotonic Solutions is the winner of this year's CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Award.

Free-form optics tiling can potentially overcome the invariant on the field of view and the resolution in a head-mounted display, and enable the design and development of lightweight and high-performance head-mounted displays.