I’d like to tell you about Laser Focus World’s 31st Annual Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar, a full-day conference and networking event to be held on February 4, 2019, the Monday before SPIE Photonics West. If you take look at our agenda and speaker lineup, I’m sure you’ll agree this event is not to be missed. While 2018 was not a repeat of the banner 2017, it has been a good year indeed for many segments of the laser industry. However, political and trade tensions between the U.S. and China are much in the news, often obscuring the deep links and market relationships between China and U.S. and European companies. To help sort through all of this, we’ve got a tremendous lineup of speakers.
We’ll lead off with a keynote from Ralf Kimmel, general manager of Trumpf Laser Technology, followed by market analyst Allen Nogee, who will present on the macroeconomic forces at work, supplier trends, and technology developments in the worldwide laser markets. Then, Dr. Bo Gu will discuss how the Chinese trade tariffs are impacting the Chinese laser market and international laser companies doing business in China. We’ll close out the morning session with a panel on how advances in precision optics are driving new applications. Topics will include fused silica and novel materials, aspheres, AR/VR optics, laser optics, laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT), system design challenges, and consumer markets.
After lunch, Novanta CEO Matthijs Glastra will talk with Editor at Large Conard Holton about Novanta’s broad portfolio of photonics, motion, and vision technology that serves applications across major medical and advanced industrial markets. While I don’t have space here to include every speaker, we will have a well-known authority and researcher in flow cytometry, William Telford from the National Cancer Institute, to provide an update on the state-of-the-art in flow and image cytometry instrumentation, along with insights into the needs and opportunities for new lasers and wavelengths, and how advancements are providing new insights to the biomedical community. So please join me on February 4, 2019, at the seminar—you can register online at http://bit.ly/2019seminar. I hope to see you there, and at our networking reception following the event.
John Lewis | Editor in Chief (2018-2021)
John Lewis served as Editor in Chief of Laser Focus World from August 2018 through October 2021, after having served as the Editor in Chief of Vision Systems Design from 2016 to 2018. He has technical, industry, and journalistic qualifications, with more than 13 years of progressive content development experience working at Cognex Corporation. Prior to Cognex where his articles on machine vision were published in dozens of trade journals, he was a technical editor for Design News, covering automation, machine vision, and other engineering topics, for over six years.