Welcome!

Adaptive optics (AO) is developed and used in a range of application areas, from observing microscopic cells to distant galaxies. While the implementation and challenges are different between field, the basic principles of AO are common. This summer school aims to bring together students and researchers from across the range of AO domains to learn together and develop connections with one another.

Latest news 

The school will take place in 2024 at the Institute d'Optique in Paris from 3rd - 7th June. 

Please see our new website:

https://sites.google.com/view/europeanaosummerschool/home

2023 School details

Plenary talk: Dr Kate Grieve

Kate Grieve (see biometrics here) is research director and team leader at the Vision Institute (Paris) and scientific director of the "Paris Eye Imaging" ocular imaging unit at the Quinze Vingts National Ophthalmology Hospital (Paris). She is also president and founder of startup SharpEye, is an expert in optical imaging. Her research aims to develop non-invasive optical measurements of retinal cell structure and function in the living human eye, as well as in cell cultures in the lab. This development contributes to significantly improving the diagnosis and monitoring of ophthalmological pathologies, as well as to evaluating the results of innovative therapies. She was recently awarded a prestigious 5 year ERC Consolidator Grant, the “ilab” innovation award, the “Jean Jerphagnon” prize for innovation in optics and the “Innovators Prize” of the Ile-de-France region.

VLT demo

Dr Johann Kolb will run through a demonstration of the AO system that is used at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile. 

You can view the live webcams at the VLT here:

https://www.eso.org/public/outreach/webcams/

and the regularly updated night-time view here:

https://www.eso.org/public/archives/static/allsky/latest/preset_101.jpg

https://www.eso.org/public/unitedkingdom/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/

Johann Kolb's biography

Johann Kolb is an Adaptive Optics Physicist at the European Southern Observatory in Garching near Munich, Germany. He is working on the design and testing of new AO systems for Astronomy at the VLT and the ELT.
He completed his PhD between ONERA (France) and ESO Garching (Germany) on “Calibration of ESO’s Multi-Conjugate AO Demonstrator MAD”, followed by 10 more years working on the calibration strategy and system tests of the AO Facility instruments GRAAL (SCAO, GLAO) and GALACSI (GLAO, LTAO). He moved to Chile in 2016 to commission the AO Facility, and then stayed until 2022 as Adaptive Optics Paranal System Engineer, proposing obsolescence correction and improvements to the current 15 AO systems in operation, with 6 more to come.

Industry demos 

Demos of instruments and components from Imagine Eyes, ALPAO, Voptica, Dynamic Optics and Phaseform will take place live. An original opportunity to meet these companies that are at the forefront of technology and to learn more about their activities!

https://www.imagine-eyes.com/

https://voptica.com/

https://www.alpao.com/

 https://www.dynamic-optics.it/

https://www.phaseform.com/ 

Lab tours

Astronomy

• Pierre Baudoz “High-contrast Adaptive Optics” Laboratoire d’Etudes Spatiales et d’Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA), Paris, France  

            https://lesia.obspm.fr/

• Lazar Staykov “Emulating atmospheric turbulence” Centre For Advanced Instrumentation, Durham University, Durham, UK 

            https://www.dur.ac.uk/cfai/

• Ali N. Bharmal and Tim Morris "Creating an artificial Sun for wide-field wavefront sensing" Centre for Advanced Instrumentatoin, Durham University, Durham, UK

           https://www.dur.ac.uk/cfai/

Microscopy

• Marie Glanc, “Adaptive Optics: from astronomy and ophthalmology to neurosciences” Observatoire de Paris, LESIA, Paris, France

            https://www.observatoiredeparis.psl.eu/?lang=fr

• Maximilian Sohmen, “Adaptive Optics for 2-Photon Microscopy” Institute of Biomedical Physics, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

            https://www.i-med.ac.at/dpmp/bmp/

• Yifei Ma, “Adaptive Optics Two-Photon Third Harmonic Generation Microscopy”  Dynamic Optics and Photonics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

           https://eng.ox.ac.uk/dop/  

• Danny Stoychev “Sensorless adaptive optics for biomedical imaging” University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

           https://ilandavis.com/

Vision/Ophthalmology

• Brian Vohnsen, "Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing in University College Dublin" University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

            https://www.ucd.ie/advancedopticalimaging/

• Pierre Senée, "Overview of the Paris AO-Ophthalmoscope: a multimodal high resolution retina imaging platform" ONERA, Paris, France

           https://www.pariseyeimaging.com/Home.htm

• Yao Cai, "Multimodal AO full-field OCT for high-resolution retinal imaging" Institut Langevin, Paris, France

           https://www.institut-langevin.espci.fr/home

• Veronika Lukyanova and Julius Ameln, "The AOVISION lab tour, imaging and probing photoreceptor cells in the living human eye” Department of Ophthalmology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.

           http://ao.ukbonn.de/   

Careers paths panel discussion

We will be joined by a panel from a range of backgrounds i and across a range of AO application areas. They will tell us about their experiences, and you will have chance to ask them questions and hear their advice.

Anne Costille - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille

Elisabeth Brunner - MedUni Vienna

María Viñas Peña  -  Institute of Optics, Spanish National Research Council

John Girkin - Centre for Advanced Instrumentation, Durham University

Pre-recorded content

A number of pre-recorded lectures will be available during the summer school:

• Laser Fabrication Patrick Salter – University of Oxford

• Imaging Through Complex Media Alexandre Aubry – Institut Langevin

• Machine Learning for AO Carlos Gonzalez-Gutierrez – University of Oviedo

• Sensorless AO Qi Hu – University of Oxford

• AO Visual simulation María Viñas Peña  -  Institute of Optics, Spanish National Research Council