SPIE Europe 2026: opening session covers many bases

SPIE Photonics Europe and SPIE Optical Systems Design, the combined conference and exhibition, opened Monday at the Palais De La Musique at des Congrès in Strasbourg, France. Welcoming the audience that packed the large Erasme Auditorium was Symposium Chair Paul Montgomery, a Senior Research Scientist working for CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and head of the Photonics Instrumentation and Processes team at ICube Laboratory, Strasbourg.

Montgomery was then joined by Michel de Mathelin, Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at the University of Strasbourg, and Catherine Trautmann, the Mayor of Strasbourg, who extended their welcomes to the student, academic, and business communities attending the event. Besides all of the talks and exhibition events, another special feature of this year’s gathering was a photonics-themed art exhibition located at various points around the conference center, entitled Extra/Ordinary Light.

Before the Hot Topics talks could start, Paul Montgomery made the presentation of the 2025 SPIE María J. Yzuel Educator Award to Dan Curticapean of Offenburg University, Germany, for his “lifelong dedication to teaching optics and photonics with infectious passion, and a lifelong dedication to the SPIE community.”

There was also recognition by SPIE President Julie Bentley for six of the recently-elected  SPIE Fellows who were attending the conference: Antonio Ambrosio, of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia; Hamid Dehghani, University of Birmingham; Ulrike Fuchs, asphericon GmbH; Agnes Hübscher, Edmund Optics GmbH; Síle Nic Chormaic, Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology; and Rengmao Wu, Zhejiang University.

Advancing agrifood with AI-empowered photonics
Chris van Hoof of imec and OnePlanet Research Center (both in Belgium) then gave his Hot Topics I presentation on how Photonics and A(G)I innovations will enable industry 5.0 & 6.0 in the agrifood sector. He stated, “Climate change is one of the greatest and most urgent challenges of our time. If we want to keep the planet livable, greenhouse gas emissions must be net zero by 2050. Food production is responsible for up to a staggering 34% of greenhouse gas emissions already having a major impact on the food system, such as crop failures due to extreme weather conditions.

“Technology can and will make the difference. The unprecedented convergence of AI, gene editing, DNA synthesis and biotechnology will revolutionize global industry, particularly in the agrifood domain,” he told the audience.

The presentation showed how optical sensing in general and photonic integrated circuits in particular are unique and indispensable technologies that provide solutions for farmers, food processing industry and consumers, and will help guide the transition of the global food ecosystem to a more secure and sustainable industry. New tools in barns, in greenhouses, in orchards, in protein bioreactors and the accompanying digital twin AI technology were shown.

Failing forward in cancer research

The second Hot Topics I presentation then followed, delivered by Prof. Lena Maier-Hein of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Heidelberg University (both in Germany), entitled: “Failing forward in deep spectral imaging”.

She introduced the topic by saying, “Spectral imaging has long promised to uncover physiological and molecular information invisible to the human eye. Yet, despite decades of innovation, its translation into clinical routine has been slow. Beyond regulatory hurdles, challenges such as ill-posed inverse problems, data scarcity, and the demand for real-time analysis have repeatedly stalled progress. To overcome these challenges, Maier-Hein presented a series of recent breakthroughs at the intersection of computational biophotonics and machine learning that are reshaping the field. “We are combining spectral imaging with deep learning to achieve real-time tissue characterization in surgery and intensive care,” she said.

Her keynote was supported with a range of case studies showing how spectral imaging can enable context-sensitive, clinically actionable support during interventions, transforming invisible spectral signatures into robust biomarkers. She revealed a mix of successes and some failures that have shaped her group’s progress. “From spectral unmixing approaches that collapsed under distribution shifts to algorithms that failed spectacularly in the operating room, negative results can become the foundation for new strategies,” she said.

“Embracing negative results is the key to moving spectral imaging, powered by AI, from promise to practice. The future of the field may not depend on avoiding failure, but on failing better,” she said. Maier-Hein left the audience impressed and amused with an example of her candid approach to “failing forward” by showing a home movie of her own young daughter learning to ride a bicycle and bumping (harmlessly) into a parked vehicle. An important lesson learned.