Congrats to the REDBACK SYSTEMS Team for winning the Optics Australia & New Zealand John Love Award for 2021! A terrific recognition of their success in developing elegantly engineered compact devices for high-resolution spectroscopy! We are celebrating their success just announced at #ANZCOP21

Dr Kai Wang (Stanford University) just gave us a terrific seminar on non-Hermitian topological photonics. He introduced this hot topic, and gave impressive experimental and theoretical results for a system of coupled resonators. Thanks Kai Wang!

Many thanks to Prof Jon Lawrence of AAO-MQ for his seminar on astronomical fibre optic multi-object spectroscopy. He nicely described the science case for the many recent astronomy surveys and summarized the techniques.

Just announced: Dr Mikolaj Schmidt of mqphotonics has been awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Fellowship for 2022 in quantum acoustic technology. Congratulations Mikolaj K. Schmidt - well done on winning this highly competitive grant and a successful #preprint appeal.

This week's seminar saw Sergio Leon-Saval (University of Sydney) give a terrific talk on Astrophotonics - a perspective on how photonics tools are used in astronomy. His stunning slides featured colourful spectra and beautiful mode patterns! Thanks Sergio G. Leon-Saval

Go ahead! Nominate an early career scientist for IUPAP Prize for fundamental or applied contributions. iupap.org/who-we-are/int…

Prof Martijn de Sterke of IPOS Photonics gave us a terrific talk on pure quartic solitons and a menagerie of their siblings in our first seminar for 2022. His passion for this "interesting and important topic" shines through.

David Coutts and Matt van Bruegel gave an update on the REDBACK SYSTEMS story. It is great to see a Macquarie start-up doing well in a global marketplace.

Helen Pask, Ondrez Kitzler and David Spence presented an MQ Photonics talk together on Raman LiDAR Spectroscopy of Subsurface Water Properties. This exciting project harnesses the diverse skills of MQ Photonics researchers to address key environmental challenges.

Dr Jiawen Li (U of Adelaide) gave an engaging talk on ultrathin multimodal fibre optic probes for medical imaging, offering great insights into her fibre optic-based biomedical imaging system. She is creating Medtech devices to make a real difference for cardiac patients.

A/Prof @IrinaKabakova2 (UTS) gave us a fascinating talk on microscale local mechanical measurements of biomaterials and cells using Brillouin microscopy. A versatile and valuable technique!

A/Prof Dawn Tan (Singapore University of Technology and Design) gave us a comprehensive presentation on her work on Bragg soliton dynamics on chip! Impressive results showing the power of #photonics

Dr Peter Reece (UNSW) spoke on optically trapped nanodiamonds for nanoscale magnetic resonance sensing. The audience appreciated that he carefully laid the groundwork on optical trapping before introducing his own research on nanoscale trapping and magnetic resonance sensing.

Dr David Payne Macquarie University School of Engineering gave an excellent and engaging talk to us on the #optics and #photonics of silicon solar cells. He provided an overview from fundamental research questions to quality control issues in commercial manufacturing of this key optoelectronic technology.

Associate Professor Yuling Wang showcased the wide scope of her group's activities from plasmonics and stimulated enhanced Raman scattering to "barcode" biomarkers. A great presentation for mqphotonics!

Prof Alison Rodger Macquarie University School of Natural Sciences explained in her seminar how she is unravelling molecular complexity using sophisticated spectrometers and polarised light measurements of complex molecules in liposomes. A great collaboration with the instrumentation specialists at AAO Astronomy!

In this week's seminar, we had our former Director, Prof Brian Orr, present a comprehensive talk for mqphotonics on photonics-based diagnostics, bringing many career highlights as examples of how light is used in sensing and spectroscopy.

Amy Jose & Mckenzie Zhuang presented today on their research on the THz properties of MgO LiNbO3 and on concentrating cells in microdroplets. Their talks were polished and the audience were really engaged, with lots of questions. Great work by mqphotonics PhD students!

Prof Mick Withford told us "Everything you wanted to know about concrete" - an engaging and enlightening intro into research into photonic sensors in concrete. SmartCrete CRC and mqphotonics heard about an unconventional topic where photonics makes a real difference!

Two great talks from the Nanosensors group today - Ana Tukova on optical characterizations of gold nanoparticle-protein interactions and Dr Mohammad Tavakkoliyaraki on SERS nanotags for biosensors. Thanks very much to our great speakers!