The department of Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE), Amrita School of Engineering, Bengaluru,  organized a two day National Workshop on “Trends and Developments in Photonics and Optical Communication (TDPOC) 2016” from March 28^th – 29^th 2016. The event was sponsored by IEEE Photonic Society and supported by Fiber Optic Services Pvt. Ltd. & IEEE COMSOC. The workshop was conducted under the guidance of Organizing Chair Dr. Shikha Tripathi (Professor, Chairperson, Department of ECE) and Workshop Chair Dr. Navin Kumar (Professor, Department of ECE). Dr. Kaustav Bhowmick, Mr. T. Sreenivasulu, Mr. Alok Kumar Jha were the coordinators of the workshop.

The objective of the workshop was to increase the awareness on recent trends and developments on Photonics and Optical Communication and explore the prospective areas of emerging applications. The workshop also aimed to encourage and promote research interest in related areas and to encourage teaching Photonics as a subject in UG & PG levels. In India, Photonics & Optoelectronics fields are emerging and have tremendous scope. The area of Photonics based devices for various communications and sensing applications is growing. Awareness on the device modeling and fabrication of these is highly essential. This workshop was an attempt to cater to the academicians and students to improve their familiarity and increase their interest in photonics related areas. Broad areas of Photonics, Optical MEMS, Microwave Photonics, Visible communication etc were covered in this workshop. Also the forum that can be created through this workshop can help to promote research collaborations between academics and industry. 

The workshop comprised of Keynote address, guest lectures by the experts from premier academic institutions and industry and also hands on sessions on RSoft Simulation Tool. The list of speakers are as follows,

1. Dr. Bishnu Pal (Former Prof. IIT Delhi, Currently @ Mahindra Ecole Centre, Hyderabad)
2. Dr. G. Hegde (Centre for Nano-Science and Engineering, IISc, Bangalore)
3. Dr. Kanwarjit Singh (Vice Chairman Technical, Tejas Networks)
4. Dr. T. Srinivas, (Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, IISc, Bangalore).
5. Dr. Yogesh Prasad (ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore)
6. Dr. Sai Siva Gorthi (Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics, IISc, Bangalore)
7. Dr. Navin Kumar (Department of ECE, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Bangalore)
8. Dr. Preeta Saran (Department of ECE, Oxford College of Engineering, Bangalore)
    

The participants found the talks and hands-on session very useful in improving the domain knowledge and providing research direction. In addition, they were happy to connect to experts for future collaborations.

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Workshop on Trends & Developments in Photonics and Optical Communications