Optics

Photonics awareness

April 8, 2015

In considering what to write for this Editor's Desk, I made a list of article topics published in the issue that could reveal a theme.

Conard Holton

In considering what to write for this Editor's Desk, I made a list of article topics published in the issue that could reveal a theme—detecting explosives, manufacturing microelectronics, optical fiber coatings in harsh environments, the history of laser diodes, and optical communications between satellites. And we have some very interesting World News stories on aspheres, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical fiber, and optical coherence tomography.

I could find no easy theme here because, after all, this is photonics. The field has a vast number of applications and products bound together in sometimes opaque ways by people who create and take advantage of light-based science and technology. You understand if you've tried to explain the field to non-practitioners, and especially politicians.

So it's good news that awareness and public funding of light-based technologies are growing, especially thanks to efforts such as the U.S. National Photonics Initiative, the Photonics21 organization and the Photonics Public Private Partnership in Europe, and the UN designation of 2015 as the International Year of Light. Upcoming conferences and exhibitions also help, notably SPIE DSS (Baltimore, MD; April 20–24), CLEO (San Jose, CA; May 10–15), and LASER World of Photonics (Munich; June 22–25)—the latter will attract over 1000 exhibitors and 25,000 attendees.

At Laser Focus World we are raising awareness of all the aspects of photonics by stressing the history and future as we celebrate 50 years of publishing. For example, in this issue we have a new "Looking back/Looking forward" article by contributing editor Jeff Hecht, this time on laser diodes (see page 29). You can also listen to laser diode pioneer and co-founder of Infinera, David Welch, describe some of that history on a video embedded in the Table of Contents of the digital edition of Laser Focus World or on our website at http://bit.ly/1HFxoU4.

About the Author

Conard Holton | Editor at Large

Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.