Force, spoken in light: Photon avalanche as a new language for sensing at the nanoscale

Dr. Natalie Fardian-Melamed, Columbia University

Recent advances in photon avalanche materials are opening a new regime of optical sensing, where small 
perturbations—including minute mechanical forces—can trigger highly amplified optical responses. In this talk, Dr. Natalie Fardian-Melamed will show how these nonlinear light–matter interactions can be harnessed for remote force detection with exceptional sensitivity and dynamic range. She’ll discuss the physical mechanisms underlying avalanche behavior in lanthanide nanomaterials, and how they enable sensing capabilities that extend beyond conventional linear optics. She’ll also highlight emerging opportunities for translating these effects into next-generation sensing platforms.

Dr. Natalie Fardian-Melamed is an associate research scientist in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University in New York. Her research focuses on developing new mechanisms for light–matter interaction that enable sensing beyond conventional limits, with a particular emphasis on photon avalanche phenomena in lanthanide nanomaterials. She is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, and was named a Rising Star of Light. She’s also on Laser Focus World’s editorial board.

Sponsored By:

Dr. Natalie Fardian-Melamed

Advancing light manipulation: Multi-domain applications of modern metasurfaces

Dr. Haoran Ren, Monash University

Optical metasurfaces have driven major advances in imaging, optoelectronics, quantum information, sensing, energy conversion, and optical computing. Dr. Haoran Ren will introduce a multifunctional disordered mosaic metasurface platform, inspired by artistic mosaic patterns. By strategically harnessing structural disorder, we demonstrate a powerful route to dramatically increase metasurface functional density, addressing the longstanding challenge of efficient area utilization. This platform establishes a versatile foundation for compact, high-density, multifunctional photonic devices. He’ll also present their recent metasurface-dressed waveguide circuit for on-chip manipulation of valley information. The valley degree of freedom offers a promising pathway for ultralow-power information processing and quantum technologies, and our demonstration bridges a critical gap in lightwave valleytronics—enabling scalable and integrable valley-based signal processing. He’ll briefly highlight additional applications of metasurfaces in biomedical imaging, wavefront control of quantum emission, and nonlinear and linear angular-momentum holography with increased multi-channel bandwidth.

Dr. Haoran Ren is a Senior Research Fellow and an ARC Future Fellow at the School of Physics and Astronomy at 
Monash University, where he leads the Monash NanoMeta Group. His nanophotonics research explores the 
multidimensional nature of light and its precisely engineered interactions with matter at the nanoscale and quantum level. He serves as an Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS), Secretary (2025) of the Australian and New Zealand Optical Society, Chair (2024-2026) of the OPTICA Photonic Metamaterials Technical Group.

Sponsored By:

Dr. Haoran Ren

Sound waves that process light information: A road toward reconfigurable optical neural networks and versatile quantum signal processing

Professor Birgit Stiller, Leibniz University Hannover 
She also leads the Quantum Optoacoustics Group at Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light

 Sound waves and light waves are very different: Light is much faster and can travel through outer space, while 
sound is 100,000 times slower and needs a material such as a solid, gas, or liquid to move. The research in 
Professor Stiller’s group leads to new types of data processing with sound waves, applications for secure 
quantum communications and storage of light information. She’ll introduce us to optoacoustics and the role it 
plays in quantum signal processing and photonic neuromorphic computing.

Dr. Birgit Stiller is a full professor at Leibniz University Hannover, and also leads the Quantum Optoacoustics
Group at Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light. From 2015 to 2019 she was a Postdoctoral Research 
Fellow at the University of Sydney (Prof. Benjamin Eggleton), working on integrated photonic circuits. Before 
this, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the field of quantum communications: Quantum key distribution and 
quantum hacking at MPL (Prof. Gerd Leuchs). She holds a Ph.D. from the CNRS Institute FEMTO-ST and the 
University of Franche-Comte in Besancon, France, where she helped pioneer Brillouin scattering within 
photonic crystal fibers (Dr. Thibaut Sylvestre, Dr. Jean-Charles Beugnot). Stiller is on Laser Focus World’s
editorial board.

Sponsored By:

Professor Birgit Stiller

Predicting and preventing damage in continuous-wave high-energy laser optics

Dr. Justin Sigley, AmeriCOM

High-energy laser (HEL) systems demand robust optical components and rigorous predictive maintenance 
schedules to mitigate the risk of failure under high average output power. Unlike pulsed systems, where peak 
intensity often dictates damage, continuous-wave (CW) laser optic longevity is governed by an interplay of 
thermal dynamics, material properties, and environmental conditions. Dr. Justin Sigley’s presentation will 
highlight current work to characterize critical parameters affecting laser damage in CW systems and the 
implications for optics manufacturers and integrators.

Dr. Justin Sigley is the chief scientist at AmeriCOM, where he directs the research focus of the Defense 
Precision Optics Consortium. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Wake Forest University, specializing in 
microscopy techniques for hemostasis, cancer, and regenerative medicine research. Sigley has spent the last 
15 years developing optical systems for defense and commercial applications. He is currently focused on highenergy laser optics metrology and sustainable manufacturing for the defense industrial base. He serves on 
Laser Focus World’s editorial board, has authored numerous technical publications, and is an inventor on two 
patents.

Sponsored By:

Dr. Justin Sigley