I attended CLEO in May and was happy to see and chat with many of you in person there—but if you weren’t able to make it this year, four things really stood out for me. The first is how fantastic all the plenary talks were—but it’s exactly what we’d expect from Professor Nathalie Picqué, Professor Dirk Englund, Dr. Franco Nori, and Professor Federico Capasso.

Can you guess the second thing? A real focus on quantum research and advances.

And the third and fourth takeaways are most fundamental: As a community, we need to be talking about and working to prevent more science funding cuts within U.S. government agencies (particularly NSF, NASA, NIST, and NIH) and for researchers at our universities—and reverse the damage already done. Most people outside the science realm appear to be oblivious any of this is happening—we all need to work together to stop it or it’ll get much worse. In the words of Dylan Thomas: Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

On a much lighter (and fourth) note, an overwhelming number of people I spoke with said their favorite part of CLEO is to catch up with friends and colleagues they don’t get to see in person often and the way a seemingly casual conversation can easily lead to a new way of thinking about a challenge or result in a collaboration.

Nearly every researcher whose work I get the chance to write about has the same message—these industry conferences are a fantastic opportunity for the types of chats that end up making a huge difference in their work/lives. And surprisingly, some of the best conversations I had were outside the conference hall—while walking to/from the hotel or popping over to the local French bakery. You never know who you’ll bump into or meet.

We’ll be attending SPIE’s Photonics West in Jan/Feb 2027, so please feel free to reach out if you’d like meet me, Justine Murphy, or the rest of the Laser Focus World crew. We’re always happy to hear from you via email or—even better—talk to you in person.