Welcome 2026

Photonics is gaining ground in the artificial intelligence (AI) area in close competition with mature technologies (such as microelectronics) and developing platforms (such as memristive in-memory computing). Photons are viewed more and more as optimum information processing and transporting carriers for their versatility, speed and energy economy that make them apt for innovative hardware implementations. In turn, artificial intelligence in general and machine learning in particular have revealed as phenomenal tools capable to tackle complex problems like those faced in photonics. In fact they are helping boost progress in aspects concerning, for instance, new materials, inverse design, and even physical laws discovery.

The integration of both disciplines is a two-way street where the benefits are incalculable. Bringing together the international communities involved in artificial intelligence and photonics can only be in their mutual benefit and that of science in general. To this end, we intend to bring forward a meeting with international experts in the two areas and the respective national communities to create the seed of a new speciality almost absent in the country and, hopefully, joint industrial or research initiatives.

Confirmed invited lecturers:

Topics:

Transfer Learning
Machine Learning for Inverse Design (scattering, metamaterials, disorder, topological systems, quantum photonics)
Bidirectional Deep Learning
Machine Learning for Device and System Optimization
Photonic Hardware Implementations
Free Space Optical Computing
Diffusive Multiple Scattering Materials
Analogue Computing
Reservoir Computing
Single-, Multi-mode and Multi-core Fibres
Mach-Zehnder Interferometer Photonic Integrated Circuits
Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers
Micro-ring Resonators Networks
Photonic Synapses
Phase Change Materials for Synapses
Spiking Neural Networks