What’s Hot?
Donald C. O’Shea · Optical Engineering · 2001
What's Hot?It was a blast!Certainly I anticipated that Photonics West 2001 in San Jose would be an exciting event.But it was better than anyone expected.For me, the first inkling that this was a different kind of SPIE conference came on Saturday night, the first day of BiOS, the Biomedical Optics conference.I had the privilege of presenting the SPIE Directors Award to Professor Abraham Katzir of Tel Aviv University.Abraham has been one of the prime movers of the biomedical optics program for SPIE.He had not been able to attend the Annual Meeting in July, so the award, which recognized his contribution to the Society and the field, was presented that night.It was given before the Saturday Night Hot Topics, a series of 10-minute reviews of current trends by leaders of biomedical optics.The first was given by Professor Britton Chance of Penn, a pioneer of biomedical optics.My own contact with things biological occurred quite a while ago when I was doing Raman spectroscopy of teeth ͑hy-droxyapatite͒ and snake venom.Since then the field has developed marvelous new techniques for diagnosis, analysis, and treatment.The interest in these topics can be gauged by the attendance at the Hot Topics session.Granted the local hockey team, the San Jose Sharks, was not playing at home, but the auditorium in the convention center certainly contained the most excitement to be found in downtown San Jose that Saturday night.The room seated about 400.Every seat was filled; latecomers were parked along the walls and stacked up in the entry alcoves.There was a sense of excitement, a ''buzz'' in that room.And it was the first of many I encountered that week.The conference sessions were well attended.That Saturday night scene was repeated numerous times during the course of Photonics West.As attendees craned their necks to get a better view of the slides projected on screens, SPIE staff scrambled to provide larger rooms when possible.It was not just the technical sessions that produced marked enthusiasm.The short courses, aug-