Presentation Type: Tutorial

Alexis Méndez received a PhD. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, in 1992.  He is president of MCH Engineering LLC—a firm specializing in optical fiber sensing technology.  Dr. Méndez was the former Group Leader of the Fiber Optic Sensors Lab within ABB Corporate Research (USA), and former Director of Sensing Solutions at Micron Optics.  He has accumulated over 25 years of experience in optical fiber technology, sensors and photonics.  He has written 70 technical publications, taught multiple short courses on fiber sensing, holds 5 US patents and is recipient of an R&D-100 award.  Dr. Méndez is a Fellow of SPIE and was past Chairman of the 2006 International Optical Fiber Sensors Conference (OFS-18), past Technical Chair of the 2nd Workshop on Specialty Optical Fibers and their Applications (WSOF-2).  He is co-editor of the “Specialty Optical Fibers Handbook”, co-author of SPIE’s “Fiber Optical Sensors Book—Fundamentals & Applications, 4th Ed.”, and Series Editor for Taylor & Francis book series on Optical Fiber Sensors.

Yuliya Semenova received her Master in Electronic Engineering degree from the
National University “Lviv Polytechnic” (Ukraine) in 1992 and her Ph.D. in Physics from
the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1999. She is Professor in the School of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering at the Technological University Dublin, where she has
been since 2001, and Director of Photonics Research Centre since 2019. She has over
350 publications in the field of photonics with over 5500 citations to her work. She has given
numerous invited talks and tutorials and supervised to completion 14 PhD graduates. She is an
Associate Editor of IET Electronics Letters, Journal of Lightwave Technology and Sensors MDPI. Her
current research interests span both photonics and applications of photonic devices in engineering
with a focus on fiber optics. Much of her work to date has been on improving of design and
performance of optical fiber sensors with applications ranging from macro- to nanoscales. Some of
the specific areas of her interests are: whispering gallery mode effects in microfiber resonators,
plasmonic structures and photonic (liquid) crystal fiber sensors.

Scott Foster is a Principal Scientist with the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG)
in Adelaide, South Australia. After obtaining a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from the
University of Adelaide in 1996, he worked in the opto-electronics industry for 3 years before
joining DST as a Research Scientist in 1999. From 2003-2017 he led research into precision
photonic sensor technologies for undersea surveillance and, in partnership with defence
industry, has developed advanced fibre optic sonar systems. He currently leads national
multi-institute initiatives on precision quantum sensing technologies and next generation
piezo-electric materials. He holds 3 patents and has authored around 60 journal and
conference papers, with over 1000 citations in the literature, including important works on
distributed feedback fibre lasers and on the fundamental noise limits of fibre optic
measurement. His research interests include precision measurement and quantum sensors,
optical fibre lasers, advanced piezoelectric and magnetostrictive materials, and their
application to sensing.

Joel Villatoro received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in optics from the INAOE-Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, Puebla, Mexico, in 1995 and 1999, respectively. He is currently Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. Prior to his current position, he held research posts at Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Birmingham, U.K.; the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), Barcelona, Spain; the Centro de Investigaciones en Óptica A. C., Leon, Mexico; the University of Valencia, Spain; and the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. In 2020, he was awarded the distinction of Optica Fellow for his contributions to interferometric optical fiber sensors. In 2021, he was included in the prestigious list of the World’s top 2% of scientists. His research interests include interferometric sensors based on standard, multicore and photonic-crystal fibers, applications of sensors in real-world environments, and development of micro and nano-sensors for biomedical applications.

Moshe Tur received the B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Physics from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel (1969), the M.Sc. degree in Applied Physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel (1973), and his Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel (1981). After spending two years at Stanford University (Information Systems Laboratory and Ginzton Laboratory), researching innovative fiber-optic technologies, he joined (1983) the Faculty of Engineering at Tel-Aviv University, becoming a full Professor in 1991. There, he has established an advanced fiber-optic sensing and communication laboratory. He authored or co-authored more than 800 journal and conference technical papers with emphasis on fiber-optic sensing (mainly in Structural Health Monitoring, using static and dynamic fiber Bragg gratings, as well as the Brillouin and Rayleigh effects), advanced fiber-optic communication systems, polarization mode dispersion, phase noise and microwave photonics. He also holds 10 issued patents and a few patent applications.

Prof. Tur is currently an active Professor (Emeritus) of Tel-Aviv University.

Mainly due to the advantage of the technology, partly due to some of his more than 60 supervised M.Sc.’s. and Ph.D.’s, and partly due to many collaborations with both the Israeli Academy and Industry, fiber-optic sensing is nowadays being used in Israel in many applications from load monitoring in aircrafts to the detection of damage in ball-bearings.

Prof. Tur has been involved in many international collaborations with leading universities and industries world-wide, and also participated in a number of European Projects and activities: INCO, SENARIO (Structural Health Monitoring), SARISTU (Structural Health Monitoring), COST-299 (Optical Fibres for New Challenges Facing the Information Society), COST-TD1001 (Novel and Reliable Optical Fibre Sensor Systems for Future Security and Safety Applications) and Horizon 2020 ITN-FINESSE (FIbre NErvous Sensing SystEms).

Dr. Tur is a Fellow of Optica (the Optical Society of America) and a Life Fellow of IEEE. In September 2018, he was presented with a Life-Time Achievement Award by the International Optical Fibre Sensor Community for his outstanding contributions.

Prof. López-Higuera is the founder and
head of the Photonics Engineering Group
of the University of Cantabria, CIBER-
BBN of Institute of Health Carlos III and
IDIVAL of Hospital Universitario Marqués
de VAldecilla, Spain.
Prof. López-Higuera is the founder and
current Director of International School
on Light Sciences and Technologies,
ISLIST, UIMP, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and
2022. At ISLIST, highly reputed invited
Speakers including the Nobel Laureates
Andre Geim, Sujhi Nakamura, Donna
Strickland and Gerard Mourou have had
shared their Knoweledgee and experience
with the partcipants.
He was General Chairman of EWOFS,
2004 and OFS23, 2014 in Santander,
Spain and is a Member of a wide set of
international Committees of Conferences,
R&D Institutions, and Companies in the
area of photonic sensing. His work is
focused on optical sensor systems and
instrumentations for any sector
application. He has worked in a wide
range of R&D&i projects, acting in more
than 100 of them as manager.
He has contributed with more than 800
research publications and 25 patents and
also directed morae than 20 PhD theses.
He has worked as an editor and co-author
of four international books, as a co-editor
of several conference proceedings and
Journals. He is co-founder of three
technology-based companies.
Prof. López-Higuera is a Fellow of OSA,
Fellow of SPIE, Fellow IAAM, Fellow
VEBLEO, Senior of IEEE and a Member of
the Royal Academy of Medicine of
Cantabria.

Dr. Jyotsna Sharma joined the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Louisiana State University as an Assistant Professor in 2019, after working in the oil industry for Chevron, Schlumberger, and Shell. Her current research interests include fiber optic sensing and machine learning. At Chevron, she led enhanced oil recovery projects in the US, Canada, Venezuela, and Indonesia and worked extensively on the fiber optic monitoring program in producers/injectors and harsh environment testing. She also provides consultation to energy companies for fiber installation and data interpretation. At Schlumberger, Dr. Sharma worked as a Field Engineer doing formation evaluation. She has a multidisciplinary background with a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from the University of Calgary and a B.Tech. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.