Photonics Finland celebrated its 10th Anniversary by organizing its annual main event OPD in Helsinki at the end of May with the record-breaking numbers; with 438 participants, and 45 exhibitors from all over the Europe, US, and Japan.
Once again, the event offered an excellent opportunity for interesting discussions and networking together with Academic and Industrial program, Poster session with 80 posters, Student event, Job fair, Matchmaking by the Europe Enterprise Network of Finland, PREIN Annual Event with the participation of the Ministry of Education & Culture Sari Multala (see her regards HERE), and The Nordic Photonics Forum focusing on the collaboration between Nordics countries and France with the participation of Business France.
In addition, Friday 31st was dedicated to delegation visits organized by DEEPSUPPORT partnership for participants coming from abroad. The project aims to discover the different photonics ecosystems of the regions involved and build collaborations based on the new knowledge. The delegation visited to VTT facilities (MIKES and Micronova) and Dispelix.
Students are important part of OPD. This year Aalto University Optica Student Chapter with the lead of Suvi-Tuuli Akkanen from Aalto University organized the OPD Student Event and panel discussion focused on the opportunities and challenges of gaining employment in Finland.
During the traditional OPD-dinner the celebration speech was given by Professor Jyrki Saarinen from the Center for Photonics Sciences (UEF) & PREIN – Photonics Research and Innovation Flagship. Professor Saarinen was the very first Chairman of the Photonics Finland board in years 2014 – 2015.
Also, in honor of the significant milestone, Photonics Finland magazine Fotoni Editor-in-Chief Jouko Korppi-Tommola had written a fantastic article on the history of Photonics Finland, the 10th year anniversary edition of Fotoni magazine was released during the OPD. The magazine web version is available for everyone HERE.
Photonics Finland awarded Photonics Finland member Vaisala as a Photonics company of the Year. The company is the global leader in measurement instruments and intelligence. Vaisala is renowned for its innovative Photonics-based products, as a substantial portion of its measurement instruments for weather and industrial applications. With over 2300 staff and almost a century of experience, Vaisala has a strong global presence and the ability to meet diverse customer needs in various markets.
”I want to thank Photonics Finland for this great and unexpected honor. We have been developing world leading optical and photonics instruments since the 1980´s, utilizing, e.g. diode laser LIDAR technologies, infrared absorption spectroscopy, and proprietary optical MEMS components to achieve the best performing products. I want to thank our great technology and R&D teams and well as research partners for making all that happen. We continue to push growth with new innovations in the Photonics sector”, says Hannu Talvitie, Technology Strategy Director from Vaisala.
Also, The best Doctoral thesis from 2023 was awarded to Markus Hiekkamäki from Tampere University. His thesis topic was “Quantum Interference in Transverse Spatial Modes of Photons”.
OPD2024 ended with the The Best Poster Awards, which was given to Jokotadeola Odutola (middle) from Tampere University , and Sami Vesamäki (on the left) from Tampere university. The award for The Best Oral Presentation was given to Éva Bozó from University of Oulu (missing from the photo).
Poster themes:
- Jokotadeola Odutola – Photo-generated carrier dynamics of N-doped graphene-based photo electrocatalysts for solar-to-chemical energy conversion
- Sami Vesamäki – Optical Sensing Enabled by Azobenzene Isomerisation Kinetics
The Best Oral Presentation:
- Èva Bozó – Plasmonic Nanopore-enhanced Single molecule Raman Spectroscopy: Towards Single-molecule Protein Sequencing
Photonics Finland is thrilled to announce that the next OPD – OPD2025 will be held in Oulu! Let’s meet there and continue to advance the field of photonics together!