Artificial Intelligence Photonics 2026 in San Sebastian: call for abstracts

The Artificial Intelligence Photonics 2026 workshop will be held at Palacio Miramar in San Sebastian, on 15-18 June, 2026. This meeting follows the first edition held in 2023 and is aimed at gathering a critical mass of people working at the intersection of AI and photonics. The preliminary list of confirmed invited speakers comprises:

• Andrea Alù, CUNY, USA
• Natalia Berloff, Oxford, UK
• Peter Bientsman, Ghent U., Belgium
• Lu Fang, Tsinghua; China
• Rachel Grange, ETH, Switzerland
• Chaoran Huang, CUHK, Hong Kong
• Aydogan Ozcan, UCLA, USA 
• Valentina Parigi, LKB, France
• Patti Stabile, Eindhoven, Netherlands
• Jelena Vuckovic, Stanford, USA

Abstract submission is open for contributed talks and posters until 1 April, 2026. The number of attendees will be strictly limited to 100. Students are more than welcome to participate.

IIT Bombay visit

Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the Department of Physics at IIT Bombay. The huge campus is a (relatively) quiet green bubble insulated from the traffic and noise of the city outside. My host was new faculty member Subhaskar Mandal, whom I first met last year towards the end of his postdoc at Nanyang Technological University.

I gave a talk on "Conical intersections and angular momentum" (slides available here). This is a long-running story which I started working on at the very beginning of my PhD studies, taking another look at it in the context of borophene lattices a few years ago. Interesting questions related to the origin and applications of  the "microscopic" orbital angular remain unanswered and worth revisiting with the current surging interest in quantum geometric effects.

I really enjoyed the other presentations on plasmonic nanocavities, bound states in the continuum, and axion topological photonic crystals, as well as interactions with the students and local faculty members. The full workshop programme is available here.

Associate Editor position, PRX Quantum / Physical Review A

PRA and PRX Quantum are seeking a talented and motivated postdoc to join the journals as a new full-time (staff) Associate Editor in the area of quantum science. The position is split between the two journals, with PRX Quantum being the primary journal, but the expectation that the new editor would work on both journals roughly 50% of their time. (Re-)location to/in the US is required, but within the US, working remotely is an option. 

The full advertisement for the position can be found here: https://aps.applicantstack.com/x/detail/a270i42m8l0s