Call For Topics

Proposal Deadline: 30 October 2023

The IEEE Summer Topicals Meeting Series serves as an international forum to facilitate information exchange between various technical communities interested in rapidly growing areas of research and technology or “Hot Topics” related to the general field of Photonics. Being a testing ground for the society’s annual meeting, the summer topicals are aimed at providing a chance of exploring research domains not yet represented at the IEEE Photonics Conference.

Historically, the conference hosts 4-7 individual topics and attracts 200 people with 30-50 participants attending each topic. This intimate environment of a small conference provides the opportunity to learn about emerging fields and to interact with the research and technology leaders. At the same time, the smaller meeting size provides the flexibility required for the organizers to pilot unique ideas to improve how the conference is run. In the past, these included workshops/discussion sections that boosted interaction between attendees, theme inspired social events to network individuals, ideas to involve local student chapters, and passive programming such as mentor match to engage students.

Proposal Requirements

To be considered, potential topic chairs should submit a proposal that includes the elements as noted below. 

Organizers:
Please include the name, affiliation, country, email address, and a brief biography for each co-chair.

Introduction:
Background, actuality, attendance, justification, i.e. Is the topic widely discussed by different research and industrial groups around the world? What type of audience is targeted?

Motivation & Scope:
Include the goals and topics to be covered. Each topical should target a minimum of 30-40 presentations and should encompass both invited and contributed papers (typically 25 invited speakers and 15 contributed speakers).

Mentorship, Networking, & Outreach:
Include your ideas for ancillary events that may provide mentorship to students, local excursions, networking amongst the attendees, lab automation hackathons, and outreach to local chapters.


Additional information about past topics at Summer Topicals can be found on the conference website. For questions about the submission process please contact Georg Rademacher, General Chair, georg.rademacher@int.uni-stuttgart.de