SPIE student chapter at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) successfully organized the annual 'Light Night'. With this theme, we took a closer look at the advantages of having a Photonics background, explored how we can take smart career decisions and how to solve problems in academia and industries effectively and efficiently. Students, alumni, professors and professionals joined in for an update of the most recent opportunities that photonics and optics have in store today to build a great future.

OSA is granting the optics and photonics community free access to a collection of the most downloaded articles in this topic area over the past year from Applied Optics. The article "Freeform optical design for a non-scanning corneal imaging system with a convexly curved image" resulting from the research of our VUB B-PHOT Postdoc Researcher Yunfeng Nie is among those most downloaded papers.

Some time ago we held our very first Bootcamp Photonics for Bachelors to highlight the potential of photonics to students. What is photonics all about? Is it very specific and limited or is it exact the opposite holding unlimited opportunities? Why has the European Commission proclaimed Photonics as a key enabling technology for the 21st century? The Aftermovie gives you a flavour of an intensive and rewarding day...

The bright blue colour of the Cyanophrys remus butterfly has its origin in the unique periodic nanostructures in its wings, which are called ‘photonic crystals’. Their unique properties enable new ways to control, guide and manipulate light leading to new applications including optical chips for future light-powered computers and for medical analysis, new solar cells and new light sources. Nature Scientific Reports published their research on transparent photonics crystals that have significantly larger features, which makes their fabrication easier, cheaper and faster.