All eyes on ARCNL research at European Optical Society Annual Meeting
ARCNL research had a strong presence at this year’s European Optical Society Annual Meeting (EOSAM), with Stefan Witte as general chair, Tamar Cromwijk as a plenary speaker and Peter Kraus chairing two scientific sessions. On top of this, PhD student Aaron Rivera Sanchez won the student poster award. EOSAM is a major international scientific conference and exhibition covering all aspects of optics and photonics.
Layer by layer in a plenary lecture
Tamar Cromwijk, who completed her PhD in Arie den Boef’s research group at ARCNL, gave a plenary lecture on Digital Holographic Microscopy as a technique for measuring the alignment of computer chip layers.
During manufacturing, the way that the layers of a chip line up with each other, called overlay, needs to be measured to check how well the chip will work. This is often measured using light microscopy, but as technology advances to make even smaller chips, the microscope should be able to measure overlay even more accurately.
One alternative imaging technique is Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM). Unlike traditional microscopes that only capture the intensity (amplitude) of light, DHM also records phase information, giving a more complete picture. This extra data allows for computational corrections of errors when processing images.
Tamar gave the talk on behalf of Arie on very short notice, and she did a great job presenting the work of the Computational Imaging research group!
A flash of light in scientific sessions
Peter Kraus, leader of the High Harmonic Generation and EUV Science group at ARCNL, gave an invited talk and chaired two sessions about optics with ultrafast laser pulses.
Laser pulses that are pico- (one-trillionth) and femto- (one quadrillionth) seconds long make it possible to study things that happen extremely quickly, like the movement of electric current in materials. Being able to control and measure these laser pulses allows researchers to, for example, study new materials for more efficient electronic devices.
Peter’s talk highlighted methods that his lab uses to produce and study ultrafast laser pulses, as well as applications in the semiconductor industry.
Leaders in the field and promising young researchers
Stefan Witte, a former group leader at ARCNL, chaired EOSAM 2025 in his current role as professor at Delft University of Technology. Many members of his research group are still based at ARCNL, and shared their work at the conference in Delft.
That many junior researchers participated in the conference is also a point of pride for ARCNL. From Peter Kraus’s group, postdoc Nataliia Kuzkova and PhD students Francesco Corazza, Tanya van Horen and Pieter van Essen each contributed talks. PhD student Aaron Rivera Sanchez from Stefan Witte’s research group won the student poster award for his poster “Event-based reconstructions in Computational Microscopy.” Aaron’s research focuses on developing algorithms to process extreme ultraviolet light signals for high-resolution imaging applications. There were many more junior researchers who contributed to EOSAM this year, and they did a great job sharing their work at ARCNL with the optics community!
Such a strong ARCNL presence at EOSAM strengthens our collaborations, and by extension our research. Thanks to the European Optical Society and TU Delft for a great conference!
More information
For more information about the conference, see the EOSAM 2025 website: EOS Annual Meeting 2025
