LASER 2011 Concluded with All Time High

The world’s largest trade fair devoted to laser and photonics technology ended on Thursday, 26 May, in Munich, Germany, hitting an all-time high. Attendance for LASER World of Photonics 2011 grew 8% over last year, with show organizers announcing 27,500 visitors and more than 1100 exhibitors, also a record. Medical technology, biophotonics, renewable energies and electro-mobility were named as the major growth areas for the laser industry.

The trade fair is accompanied by the World of Photonics Congress, a convention that attracted 3250 participants from all corners of the world. The congress includes seven sub-conferences, one of which— the European Conference on Biomedical Optics ECBO—has become the largest event of its kind in Europe. Topics such as advanced microscopy techniques, optical coherence tomography and therapeutic laser applications were addressed at the ECBO this year, attracting clinicians and industry developers as well as people from the research community.

20th Anniversary of OCT

A joint session of ECBO and CLEO Europe celebrated the 20th anniversary of optical coherence tomography (OCT) with a technology and applications tutorial by OCT pioneer James G. Fujimoto . The actual ECBO plenary on the OCT history was presented by Wolfgang Drexler of the Medical University of Vienna (Austria) under the headline “Twenty years of optical coherence tomography: where is it heading?”

Billions for Photonics

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) unveiled its promotional package “Photonics Research Germany” on the trade fair’s opening day. Optical technologies are held to be one of the most important key technologies of the future. The announcement by Dr. Georg Schütte, Secretary of State at the BMBF, of a total of one billion euros over the next ten years to promote research and development in the photonics sector was warmly received by the public, as the trade show organizer touted. Germany’s famous FAZ had a slightly different view on the event: According to FAZ, the community expected some € 150 Million annually. It has to be seen in contrast to the funding programs for nano technology (€ 400 million until 2015) or e-mobility (€ 1.000 million until 2013!). Nevertheless, the industry partners in the field of photonics promised some € 30 billion investments in R&D for the next 10 years, assuming to spend 10% of their expected revenues of € 300 billion.

Ultrafast Lasers on the Rise

After decades of development, ultrafast lasers finally arrived in the manufacturing industry. This is at least one important news from this years LASER World of Photonics. Ultrafast lasers generate femto or pico second light pulses and were popular in science for the research on nature’s ultrafast phenomena such as photosynthesis. But severe technical improvements were necessary to qualify the systems for use in material processing. First they were applied to eye surgery, but now with more than 1 kW average power available from one source, they are ready for industry applications such as micro processing or surface modification.

LASER World of Photonics takes place every other year in Munich; it returns to the Messe München in 2013 from 17 to 20 June.

When medical doctors become startup founders

The Charité Entrepreneurship Summit is an international workshop for start-up creation and entrepreneurship related to biomedical innovation. It was the place to be for newbies as well as for serial founders.

It was quite an exclusive crowd which met at this year’s Charité Entrepreneurship Summit: Venture capitalists, start-up founder, entrepreneurs, medical doctors and many people from biomedical research came to Berlin on April 11 and 12. Most requested for their experience was a very special species: the serial founder.

Finally, about 300 people from Germany, America and many other places came here to discuss ways to turn research ideas into successful companies. The Charité is Europe’s biggest hospital and hence, the discussions circled around biomedical innovations and pharmaceutical research. Although the exclusive location (a few steps from Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag) suggested a German bias, the discussion and presentations were fully international, with a strong American influence.

The setting of the two day summit supported the direct exchange of knowledge: Half the time people gathered for keynotes, the other half they met in small work groups with expert panels to discuss their urgent topics such as access to venture capital or regulatory hurdles and how to overcome them. In a third track were some special events such as “Business speed dating”, a “Venture Lounge” or Charité-related issues.

The ten keynote speakers were outstanding, the list started with the Qiagen CEO Peer Schatz and ended with Peter Thiel, the Co-founder and former CEO of PayPal. Most of them had a real story to tell, namely Peer Schatz. He believes that personalized health care is the most important change in health care in the last decades. And within that change, Qiagen focuses on the mega trend of Molecular Information. Using the opportunities of today’s gene sequencing, he sees ways to correlate genotypes and phenotypes. And that might be a start of an “information age of health science”. He prolonged this analogy to another point: Gene sequencing is getting cheaper in a pace that is faster than Moore's law, reaching $ 10k now and going down to $ 1k for one set of genes. That will enable a new era of diagnostics.

But what kind of industry are biomedical diagnostics? Today it is a $ 25 billion industry, whereas pharmaceuticals make $ 600 billion per year. But while the pharma industry grows by 4% CAGR, diagnostics show 14% growth. So biomedical diagnostics technology (and lots of it will be biophotonics!) will be a very hot topic in coming years.

But the main topic of the summit was entrepreneurship. And there was a lot of valuable knowledge for the starters and founders at the summit. One issue was certainly the development of incubators, where science is transferred to business in a sustainable and professional way. Another extremely fascinating presentation dealt with the topic “How to negotiate a term sheet with a venture capitalist”. There, an insider gave a full list of Do’s and Dont’s for this crucial part of a start-up foundation.

Finally, there was this atmosphere: Certainly, founding and financing new business is a business and a community on its own. People know each other for ages and celebrate the usual meet and greet of an international summit. But among them, there were many young founders and many of those serial founders. And they gave the event the special atmosphere. Because all of the serial founders agreed on one point: If someone starts a business, he needs to be enthusiastic, he needs to burns for his product. And this enthusiasm blended with the optimism of those who showed that such dreams can be realized gave the summit a very special spirit.

http://www.charite-summit.de/2011/

Britton Chance: 1913 – 2010

Received from our colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania:

Very early this morning (16th November) at the age of 97, the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Johnson Foundation and School of Medicine lost a loved and admired friend and colleague. Britton Chance died quietly, at peace in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He was spirited and still scientifically active right to the end. His wife Shoko Nioka was at his side.

As many of you all know, Brit lived a storied life in science and engineering and sailing; there are mountains to reflect upon. He has been associated with Penn since the nineteen thirties. By the end of the thirties, while still in his twenties, he had invented the now standard stopped flow device to measure enzyme reaction times in scattering biological materials and had proved the existence of the enzyme-substrate complex in enzyme action. During the forties Brit became the second Director of the Johnson Research Foundation. In the fifties he started and became Chair of the Department of Biophysics and Physical Biochemistry to open the Johnson Foundation to graduate student training. Renamed when it joined with Biochemistry in the seventies, Brit surely cast the die for the adventurous style and high quality of research pursued today in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Johnson Foundation. After he “retired” to become emeritus in the early eighties Brit launched a new set of research initiatives in biological imaging including in the nineties, the creation of optical diagnostics now an burgeoning field at the interface of basic science, technical development and clinical application. This includes use of imaging systems to detect breast tumors, hemorrhage deep within tissues, and human brain function in cognitive activity. His work has been honored in many ways. He has long been a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and, like Ben Franklin before him, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. In 1974 he was awarded the National Medal of Science and numerous other honors and international prizes have followed. His generosity closer to home is reflected in his founding of the Chance Chair for the Department of Radiology. This and his many contributions to the School of Medicine and University are recognized by the naming of the Stellar-Chance Laboratories at the dedication in 1995. And from start to finish he sailed, picking up a gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki on the way!

Please hold Brit, Shoko and family in your thoughts at this time. If your thoughts should turn to sending flowers, Shoko suggests that gifts in Brit’s memory be made to the Johnson Research Foundation. Donations should be made payable to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and should indicate that the gift is for the Johnson Research Foundation. The address is as follows: Penn Medicine Development, Suite 750, 3535 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3309.

We are planning a memorial service to honor Brit and his accomplishments early in the new year. We will send details to you as soon as they are available.

HELLO AND GREETINGS FROM BIOPHOTONICSWORLD.ORG!

We are very excited to announce the launch of the Biophotonics4Life Webinar Series, coming up on Monday, July 12, at 9 am PST (12 pm EST, 6 pm Germany; calculate your local time at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html ). The first Biophotonics4Life Colloquium Webinar brings together the current Co-Chairs of the worldwide consortium:

• Dennis Matthews, PhD, Director of the NSF Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology, Sacramento, CA: "Opportunities for Biophotonics in Point-of-Care Medicine".
• Juergen Popp, PhD, Coordinator of the Photonics4Life Network of Excellence, Germany: "Raman Spectroscopy - An Emerging Tool in Biophotonics"
• Brian Wilson, PhD, University Health Network, Toronto: "Making Fluorescence -Guided Surgery a Quantitative Science"
  

For the webinar URL and to RSVP, you must log in to www.BiophotonicsWorld.org and access this link: http://www.biophotonicsworld.org/events/148-bp-l-webinar .

The webinars will be recorded and posted at www.biophotonicsworld.org for later viewing, and will be available to members of www.BiophotonicsWorld.org portal all over the world. The series will continue with monthly webinars, with a hiatus in August 2010.

You will need a computer, internet access, and speakers (or headphones); also a microphone if you want to ask questions of the presenter(s).

You can invite others to join www.BiophotonicsWorld.org by following the "Invite your colleagues to join BiophotonicsWorld" link on the first page of the website. Please forward this newsletter to others who might be interested to join in and listen to the webinar.

Grants of interest to the biophotonics community, for international collaborations and/or exchanges:

European Molecular Biology Organization
The EMBO Long-Term Fellowships are awarded for a period of up to two years and support post-doctoral research visits to laboratories throughout Europe and the world. International exchange is a key feature in the application process. All fellowships must involve movement between countries and one of those countries must be an EMBC (European Molecular Biology Conference) Member State.
Deadlines are twice a year 15 August and 15 February.
http://www.embo.org/programmes/fellowships/long-term.html

The Royal Society International Joint Projects
Aim: The Royal Society International Joint Project programme is designed to enable international collaboration by providing a mobility grant for researchers and members of their research teams to cover travel, subsistence and research expenses. It also aims to provide seed money for research that will lead to further collaboration and greater funding in the future from larger funding bodies.
Subjects covered: All areas of the life and physical sciences, including engineering, but excluding clinical medicine.
Value of the grant: Up to £6000 a year for 2 years for travel and subsistence. Within the £6000 available each year, up to £1000 can be used for research expenses (excluding computer hardware).
Deadline: varies by country.
http://royalsociety.org/International-Joint-Projects/

The Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” It provides participants with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. The Program operates in over 155 countries, and awards approximately 7,500 new grants annually.

The term "Fulbright Program" encompasses a variety of exchange programs, including both individual and institutional grants:

• Fulbright US Scholar Program
• Fulbright Specialists Program
• Fubright Visiting Scholar Program
• Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence (SIR) Program
• Fulbright Visiting Specialists Program: Direct Access to the Muslim World
• Fulbright New Century Scholars global program
• Fulbright US Student Program
• Fulbright Foreign Student Program
• Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program
• Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program
• Fulbright-Hays Program
  

For more information, please visit http://fulbright.state.gov/.

More to come later. May the force of biophotonics be with you!

...from your friendly colleagues at the BiophotonicsWorld.org development desk

Hello and greetings from BiophotonicsWorld.org!

It is the season ... to send your abstracts in for conferences coming up in the Fall 2010 and Winter 2011. Abstracts for the following conferences are due May 3rd, 2010: Frontiers in Neurophotonics, Biophotonics in Infectious Disease, and Optics Within Life Sciences (OWLS). To find out more and submit your abstract now, go to http://biophotonicsweek.biophotonicsworld.org/registration.

BiophotonicsWeek 2010 is a unique series of events that will bring together faculty, physicians, students, researchers, industry, investors, entrepreneurs, funding agencies, educators and others interested in biophotonics and its applications. The conferences (listed below) were scheduled such that participants may attend 2-3 consecutive events and minimize the amount of travel, while allowing for ample interaction, in the beautiful city of Quebec, Canada in September 2010.

Faculty, academic and industry researchers, graduate students and federal agency researchers are invited to attend:

• Frontiers in Neurophotonics: Hotel Chateau Laurier, Sept. 22-24, 2010. Scope: foster scientific exchanges between neurobiologists and physicists sharing a common interest in biophotonics/neurophotonics.
• Biophotonics in Infectious Disease: Hotel Chateau Laurier, Sept. 22-24, 2010. Scope: identify major challenges in basic research and the clinical management of infectious disease that can be addressed using advanced optical and biophotonic tools and techniques; to establish R&D collaborations between groups in Canada, California, and internationally.
• Optics Within Life Sciences (OWLS-11): Laval University, Sept. 28-30, 2010. Scope: conference where students, faculty, postdoctoral and other researchers share their research findings in optics-based therapeutics, diagnostics and analytics in the life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, agriculture, biodefense and environment with peers from all over the world.

Graduate students, junior scientists, others entering the field of biophotonics can register now to attend the Biophotonics School, at Laval University, Sept. 24-27, 2010. The hands-on course will include tutorials, application talks, and lab demonstrations.

The 2nd International Congress on Biophotonics, ICOB-2, (Hotel Chateau Laurier, Sept. 25-27) will bring together thought leaders and stakeholders in specific applications of biophotonics for the purpose of generating roadmaps of needs and opportunities. Participants from life sciences, clinical medicine, biophotonics and life sciences research labs, companies, government (research agencies, health & economic policy), investment, finance, science & technology education/training will engage in intensive "biophotonics/applications landscaping" presentations, panels, break-out groups and a College of Writers to assemble roadmaps for the future of biophotonics applied to specific life sciences and medical sectors. Participation is by invitation and referral only.

In closing, here are some grants for international collaborations and/or exchanges.

• Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship Opportunities. The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), as the funding agency, provides three types of scientific collaboration fellowships using the NIH as a nominating authority. The intramural fellowship program allows Japanese Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists to conduct research at NIH. The remaining extramural fellowships allow U.S. (and permanent resident) scientists to conduct cooperative research under their host researchers in Japan. Deadline: May 31, 2010. URL: http://www.fic.nih.gov/programs/research_grants/jsps/index.htm
• UNESCO-L'OREAL Co-Sponsored Fellowship Programme for Young Women in Life Sciences. The programme is designed to identify and reward fifteen deserving, committed and talented young women scientists, from all over the world, active in the field of life sciences. With a view to ensuring that a balanced geographical representation is made, a maximum of three young women, from each of the five geo-cultural regions of the world, will be awarded fellowships. At least half of the period of the fellowship must be undertaken abroad, for a minimum duration of 6 months and a maximum duration of 12 months. Candidates must already be engaged in pursuing research at the doctoral or post-doctoral level in one or allied fields of life sciences including biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, agriculture, medicine, pharmacy and physiology. Projects involving animal models (i.e. experimentation using vertebrate laboratory animals) are rejected, and proposals in the area of cosmetics research are NOT encouraged; preference is given to non cosmetic researches. Deadline: June 30, 2010. URL: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=44170&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
• NSF 09-554 Research Coordination Networks in Biological Sciences (RCN). The goal of this program is to advance a field or create new directions in research or education. Innovative ideas for implementing novel networking strategies are especially encouraged. Groups of investigators will be supported to communicate and coordinate their research, training and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational, institutional, and geographical boundaries. For a research track RCN, the focus could be on a broad research question, a specific group of organisms, or particular technologies or approaches. For an education track RCN, the focus could be on any topic that is likely to lead to improved participation, learning, or assessment in undergraduate biology curricula. It is expected that many RCN projects may include international participants. Deadline: July 5, 2010. URL: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09554/nsf09554.htm?govDel=USNSF_25

More to come later. May the force of biophotonics be with you!

... from your friendly colleagues at the BiophotonicsWorld.org development desk
contactus@biophotonicsworld.org

Hello and greetings from BiophotonicsWorld.org!

As a member of the BiophotonicsWorld.org community, we want to update you on recent developments at this website and encourage you to use this resource for everything biophotonics.

The number of researchers studying, developing, and using biophotonics tools and technologies all over the world keeps rising steadily. Biophotonics holds many promises to aid in scientific discovery and improve health care through better, faster, less invasive and cheaper diagnostics and therapeutics. At this time of accelerated rates of scientific progress, scientists from academia, industry, and government, clinicians, students, researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, funding agencies, educators, and anybody interested in biophotonics will benefit greatly from networking, communicating and collaborating with others in the community via BiophotonicsWorld.org. The portal is highly focused on biophotonics and hence could be used to enhance the activities of its members and to advance the field.

The portal was initially developed as a side project by the NSF Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology (CBST) headquartered at UC Davis in the US and the Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovations (CIPI) in Canada. A recent infusion of funds (NSF grant) allowed CBST to pick up the pace of developing the website. This is still a work in progress, and we welcome your comments and suggestions on how to make BiophotonicsWorld.org as useful as possible.

If you haven't visited the site lately, go now to www.BiophotonicsWorld.org. Update your profile and promote your latest research, publications, and patents to a targeted audience of biophotonics enthusiasts. Invite your colleagues, students, professors to register and become active members of the site. Share images, movies, other resources with the community. Start a forum about a subject of interest to you and the community (it could be about technologies, commercialization, collaborations, expertise, etc). For a more detailed list of what you can do on BiophotonicsWorld.org is under "About".

In closing, here are some grants for international collaborations and/or exchanges.

1. NSF 04-035 International Research and Education: Planning Visits and Workshops. Planning visits proposals accepted anytime; workshop proposals deadlines: May 20, Sept. 20, Feb. 20. Awards will support the early phases of developing and coordinating a research and education activity with a foreign partner(s). URL: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf04035/nsf04035.htm
2. Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorships (3 - 10 months). Deadline: May 14, 2010. The objective of the awards is to enable distinguished academics based overseas to spend between three and ten months at a UK university, primarily in order to enhance the skills of academic staff or the student body within the host institution. Applications must be made by a member of academic staff, based in a UK university or other higher education institution, who will be responsible for co-ordinating the visit. URL: http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/grants_awards/grants/visiting_professorships/
3. German Academic Exchange Service - PhD Research Grant & Research Visit Grant for Faculty. Deadlines: May 15, 2010. PhD Research Grant: Research grants are awarded primarily to highly qualified PhD candidates who are early in their academic/professional careers or to individuals wishing to earn a doctoral degree in Germany. Funding may also be granted to recent PhDs who would like to conduct research. Research Visit Grant for Faculty: DAAD offers grants for one to three months in all academic disciplines to scholars at US and Canadian institutions of higher education to pursue research at universities, libraries, archives, institutes or laboratories in Germany.

More to come later. May the force of biophotonics be with you!

... from your friendly colleagues at the BiophotonicsWorld.org development desk
contactus@biophotonicsworld.org