Seminars

Future AR/VR/MR will rely heavily on advanced and smart eye-tracking, gesture recognition, and haptics to enrich intuitive and immersive user experience. Human-machine and environmental interface devices with low power consumption and computing costs are therefore in demand. This seminar gives a brief review of sensor and interface circuit technologies for human-machine interactions, followed by an introduction to emerging sensors and sensor interfaces bioinspired by human sensory and nervous systems, along with very recent research and development on neuromorphic sensors and circuits. 

Kai Wang has been associated with the School of Electronics and Information Technology at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, since 2014. He obtained his PhD from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2008 and continued his pursuit of excellence as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at Thunder Bay Health Science Centre, Canada. During this time, he conducted cutting-edge research on radiation detectors and image sensors. In 2011, he joined Apple, Inc., as a senior hardware development engineer, further enhancing his expertise in touch sensors and human-machine interface technologies. His contributions to the scientific community include publishing over 120 journal papers and conference proceedings. He has also coauthored more than 40 patents, many of which have been transferred to industry.

Light-engine and imaging optics jointly determine the performance of augmented-reality (AR) and virtual-reality (VR) displays in terms such as power consumption, form factor, field-of-view, eye box, image quality, contrast ratio, cost, etc. In immersive VR headsets, high-dynamic-range AMLCDs and OLED-on-silicon are currently the two dominant technologies, while high-efficiency pancake lenses and beam-shaping films help to reduce the form factor and power consumption. In optical see-through AR displays, high brightness yet ultracompact liquid-crystal-on-silicon, OLED-on-silicon, LED-on-silicon, MEMS, and laser beam scanners are strong contenders to offer a high ambient contrast ratio for outdoor applications. In terms of optical combiner, geometric optics, diffractive waveguide, achromatic waveguide, and metalens visor are promising candidates for expanding the eye box while keeping a compact and lightweight form factor. To enhance ambient contrast ratio and occlusion, while keeping a low power consumption, a smart dimmer is proven to be effective.

Shin-Tson Wu is a trustee chair professor at the College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida (UCF). He is an Academician of Academia Sinica, a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, SID, and SPIE. He is a recipient of the Optica Edwin H. Land Medal (2022), SPIE Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award (2022), Optica Esther Hoffman Beller Medal (2014), SID Slottow-Owaki Prize (2011), Optica Joseph Fraunhofer Award (2010), SPIE G. G. Stokes Award (2008), and SID Jan Rajchman Prize (2008). He has published seven books and 675 journal papers and obtained 96 US patents. In the past, he served as the founding Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Display Technology, Optica publications council chair and board member, and SID honors and awards committee chair.

This seminar will review and analyze various optical architectures, display technologies, and optical building blocks used in head-mounted displays (HMDs) for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Basic concepts of near-eye display optics and key design parameters will be explained. Design challenges caused by the constraints between various parameters will be analyzed. Some typical optical architectures, including bird bath, pancake, free form, and waveguide, as well as those of the latest HMDs, will be presented.  

Huajun Peng received his doctoral degree from the Center for Display Research (CDR) of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2005. He has been engaged in cutting-edge work in the information display field for the past 20 years, covering OLED devices, LED local dimming BLUs, HDR algorithm systems, LCoS/OLEDoS fabrication, and near-eye display optics. Peng founded Shenzhen NED Optics Co., Ltd., and serves as CEO, focusing on AR/VR optics and headsets. He has published 20 academic papers and is an inventor of 60 issued patents.

The display engine is the heart of mixed-reality hardware, forming the image and creating an exit pupil for the human eye or the waveguide. Several different technologies and architectures are used for display engines to fit the headset specifications. This seminar aims to give an overview of the optical design of display engines currently used by VR and AR headsets. It is split into two parts, with the first concentrating on occlusive architectures (VR) with optical designs based on hybrid Fresnel lenses, catadioptric optics (aka pancakes), and segmented optics. The second part of the course describes the display engines for optical-see-through architectures (AR) with and without an exit pupil expansion waveguide.

Andreas Georgiou is an independent consultant with Reality Optics, Ltd., and he is particularly interested in computational optics for wave and geometrical optical design. He worked in diffractive optics for over two decades and over a decade in mixed-reality optics. Georgiou enjoys making new ideas into operating prototypes by combining physics, mathematics, engineering, and software. He particularly likes working with head-mounted displays, three-dimensional displays, sensors, and everything unusual with lenses and gratings inside. Before his current position, he worked with many product groups at Microsoft (Surface, HoloLens, Azure, and Kinect), developed micro-confocal endoscopes for surgery, designed space instruments for Mars, and created the first genuinely holographic display. He obtained his PhD in optics from Cambridge University. He is an engineering research fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge, where he continues to teach. He has over 30 patents and over 20 peer-reviewed publications on head-mounted displays, data storage, holographic displays, and data transmission.

There are increasing demands for light manipulation in the display industry, including diffusers, 3D reconstructing plates, transparent conductive film, light waveguides for AR, reflective polarizing films, and more. This seminar focuses on the design and fabrication technologies for photonic devices used in displays. First, the design rules of photonic devices with nanostructures or microstructures will be introduced. The fabrication method and mass manufacturing approach for photonic devices used in displays will be addressed as well. Finally, the potential directions of photonic devices will be discussed.   

Wen Qiao received her BS in optical information from Tianjin University and her MS in optical engineering from Zhejiang University, China. She received her PhD in photonics from the University of California, San Diego. She is now a full professor at the School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering at Soochow University. Qiao’s areas of research center on the developments of novel nanostructures for photonic devices in 3D display and augmented-reality displays. She has published more than 50 journal papers, including in Advanced Materials, Light: Science & Applications, and Optica, and applied for/granted more than 100 patents. She won the annual outstanding display young talent award of the International Society for Information Display (SID) Beijing Chapter, and the first prize of Jiangsu Science and Technology 2022.

We need oxide TFTs with mobility over 50cm2/Vs and excellent stability. Recently, polycrystalline oxide is of increasing interest because of its high mobility and low-temperature crystallization in air. This seminar explains the recent advancement of the performance and stability of poly-oxide TFTs. LTPO TFTs for OLED and microLED displays will be included.  

Jin Jang is a professor with the Department of Information Display and the Advanced Research Center of Kyung Hee University. He is the author or co-author of over 1,000 papers, of which over 680 are in SCI/SCIE journals such as Nature, JSID, and Advanced Materials. He is working on oxide, LTPS, and LTPO-TFT arrays for displays, flexible AMOLEDs, microLEDs, and TFT sensors. He reported the first full-color AMLCD, flexible AMOLED, and full-color AMOLED using white OLED at SID’s Display Week. He is currently a director of the Advanced Display Research Center (ADRC) and has served as general chair for both IMID and SID’s Display Week. 

This seminar starts with the ultimate goal for displays (naked-eye 3D), and the demand on realizing such 3D displays, and then introduces colloidal quantum-dot (QD) displays. The next focus is on key technologies for QD to become a display, especially pixel patterning. The recent development of QD patterning, especially photolithography-based patterning, is reviewed. The seminar then introduces the use of electrodeposition, inkjet printing, to achieve high-resolution pixilation and highly reliable quantum-dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs). More understanding of QLED device physics is also reviewed. A QD microdisplay is demonstrated by integrating QLED onto a silicon backplane. These developments could contribute to the ultimate 2D display panel for lightfield 3D displays.

Xiao Wei Sun is presently a chair professor and executive dean of nanoscience and applications at the Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. He is the founding head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Before joining Southern University of Science and Technology, he worked at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as a full professor. He is a Fellow of SID and the 2023 SID Slottow-Owaki Prize recipient. He is an Academician of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials, and a Fellow of Optica (formerly OSA), SPIE, and the Institute of Physics (IoP, UK). He is a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council, an Elsevier Highly Cited Scholar, and a Stanford Top-2% Scientist. 

Defects related to oxygen deficiency play a significant role in determining the characteristics and stability of a metal-oxide thin-film transistor (TFT). It is well known that the population of such defects is sensitive to the temperature, duration, and atmosphere of the annealing process to which a TFT is subjected. The kinetics of defect generation and annihilation have been thoroughly studied and a quantitative model has been developed to relate the turn-on voltage, a measurable electrical parameter, to relevant parameters of the annealing process. Besides thermal processes, fluorination has been reported to be an efficient process for reducing the population of defects, leading to improved TFT characteristics and stability. The conditions of plasma fluorination have been investigated in detail and optimized, resulting in significant improvement in electrical and thermal stability.

Man Wong obtained his BS and MS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his PhD from Stanford University, all in electrical engineering. After working for a few years at the Semiconductor Process and Design Center of Texas Instruments, he joined the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include micro-fabrication technology, device structure and material; physics and technology of thin-film transistor; and modeling and implementation of integrated micro-systems. Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&tzom=-480&user=KGXAyxYAAAAJ.

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Aleksey Yekimov, Professor Louis Brus, and Professor Moungi Bawendi for their pioneering work in the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.  Quantum dots have become a major materials component of modern displays, in commercial LCD products since 2013, and now in a new generation of QD-OLED TVs, but the Nobel Prize was given largely for chemistry work done up to and including the 1990s, when the LCD TV was a technology of the future. This seminar reviews the science that led to the Nobel Prize, and the technology that led to the QD TV, as well as where QDs could lead us in the future.  

Seth Coe-Sullivan is co-founder, board member, chief executive officer, and president of NS Nanotech, Inc., a spin-out of University of Michigan and McGill University. NS Nanotech is a world leader in nanowire microLEDs for displays and disinfection. From 2016-2019 Coe-Sullivan was chief technology officer of Luminit LLC, where his team launched the world’s first volume holographic combiner product for augmented-reality displays. From 2004-2016, he was co-founder, member of the board of directors, and chief technology officer of QD Vision, which was acquired by Samsung.  He also currently advises several start-up companies in their early technology development phases. Coe-Sullivan received his PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and ScB from Brown University. He has received numerous awards for technology and innovation in the fields of displays, quantum dots, and environmental health and safety, including the MIT Tech Review’s TR25 Award, the SEMI Award for North America, the Presidential Green Chemistry Award, and SID’s Peter Brody Award.  In 2023 he was named a Fellow of the Society for Information Display.

This seminar will discuss the fundamentals of oxide and organic thin-film transistors, and their operation in the subthreshold regime for low power applications. Oxide and organic semiconductors have a relatively large bandgap, therefore rendering ultra-low electrical off-state current and good optical transparency. The remarkable features of ultra-low off-state current facilitate deep subthreshold operation, while optical transparency opens up possibilities for multi-modal sensing/modulation in bioelectronics. Subthreshold thin-film transistors have advantages of low power and high gain, which are important for bioelectronic applications; for example, real-time electrophysiologic recording. In addition, the seminar will introduce the novel application of high-channel-count active-matrix neurostimulation, showcasing the expanding role of thin-film transistors beyond traditional applications in display and biosensing.

Chen Jiang is currently an assistant professor with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University. He received a BS in engineering from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and a PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK. From 2018 to 2021, he was supported by the Wellcome Trust as a Junior Interdisciplinary Fellow at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, UK. His research focuses on novel electronic device architectures, large-area flexible transparent electronics, and low-power circuits and their applications to bioelectronics. Jiang was a recipient of the IEEE Electron Devices Society PhD Student Fellowship 2018, and the Intel China Academic Excellence Scholarship 2022.

Large models have shown great potential in the task of quality assessment of visual contents. This talk introduces some recent advances in the filed quality assessment using large language models and large multimodal models, including the basic ideas, the efficient approach in prompt design, and methods for model adaptation. This line of research is expected to achieve high performance as well as low risk of overfitting for the general task of visual quality assessment. 

Guangtao Zhai is a professor in the Department of Electronics Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research interests are in the fields of multimedia and perceptual signal processing. He has won the best student paper award of Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) 2015, the best student paper award from the IEEE ICME 2016, the best paper award of IEEE Trans. Multimedia 2018, Saliency360! Grand Challenge of ICME 2018, the best paper award of IEEE MMC at ICME 2019, the best paper award of IEEE CVPR Dyna-Vis Workshop 2020, the best paper runner-up of IEEE Trans. Multimedia 2021, first place in UGC VQA Contest FR Track in IEEE ICME 2021, the best paper award of IEEE Broadcasting Technology Society 2022, second place in ECCV 2022 MIPI Quad-Bayer Re-Mosaic Challenge, first place in ICIP 2022 Grand Challenge in Video Distortion Detection and Classification in the Context of Video Surveillance, and the IEEE MSATC 2023 Best Paper Award-Honorable Mention, the challenge award of point cloud visual quality assessment at IEEE ICIP 2023. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Displays (Elsevier).