In South Africa, at the End of October, during the ICO-26 conference, Prof. Juergen Czarske was elected Vice President of the International Commission for Optics (ICO) for the second time. The ICO is an international organization for optics and photonics based in PALAISEAU Cedex/Paris, France and Miami/Florida, USA, which represents the interests of over 50 member countries and seven associations such as OPTICA (The Optical Society, Washington DC), SPIE (Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, Washington, USA) and Photonics Society of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, USA). Over 50,000 members are thus indirectly represented. The ICO was founded two years after the Second World War in 1947 with the aim of contributing to the progress and dissemination of the interdisciplinary field of optics and its applications at an international level, as well as to promote participants from developing countries and bring them together with top-class researchers and Nobel Prize winners.

Light technology is transforming society with displays, fiber optics for the internet, AI-based optics and advances in medicine. Light technology has the potential to enable early diagnosis of diseases, their prevention or mild therapy.

"As ICO Vice President, I intend to share my enthusiasm for exploiting the potential of optics and photonics with young people around the world. Motivation is particularly important in order to reduce the shortage of skilled workers, because advances in lithography and microelectronics such as those at TSMC in Dresden are unthinkable without optics", emphasizes Prof. Jürgen Czarske.

Prof. Czarske holds the professorship for measurement and sensor system technology at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and heads the Biomedical Computational Laser Systems (BIOLAS) competence center. He is a fellow of the Optical Society (OSA), European Optical Society (EOS), Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and International Society of Optics and Photonics (SPIE). He has received several awards, including the OPTICA Joseph Fraunhofer Award / Robert M. Burley Prize 2019 and the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award 2024.