Alan Willner plenary talk: Activities of the National Photonics Initiative

The National Photonics Initiative (NPI) was started by multiple professional societies as a result of a 2012 U.S. National Academies Study Recommendation in order to help enable the coordination of industry, government and academia in advancing issues of critical importance to our community. Key application areas that have been highlighted within the NPI include manufacturing, communications, health, defense, and sensing.

This plenary talk describes the NPI, discusses several recent successes in advocacy and raising awareness, and explores the importance of the NPI to the semiconductor lithography and manufacturing communities.

Alan Willner is the Sample Chaired Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). hE received a BA (1982) in Physics and PhD (1988) in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. He also holds an Honorary Degree (Honoris Causa, 2012) from Yeshiva University.

His awards include the Int'l Fellow of U.K. Royal Society of Engineering, IEEE Eric Sumner Award, NSF Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from White House, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Packard Foundation Fellowship, Fulbright Foundation Senior Scholars Award, OSA Forman Eng. Excellence Award, IEEE Photonics Society Eng. Achievement Award, and Eddy Best Technical Paper Award from Pennwell.

Willner is a Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, OSA, and SPIE. He was Co-Chair of National Academies Committee on Optics and Photonics, President of IEEE Photonics Society, Vice-President of OSA, Co-Chair of OSA Science and Engineering Council, General Co-Chair of CLEO, and Editor-in-Chief of Optics Letters, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology and IEEE JSTQE. Prof. Willner has over 1000 publications, including 1 book and 25 U.S. patents.