The European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the XIth European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO®/Europe-EQEC) is being held as part of the World of Photonics Congress from 14-19 June 2009 in Munich.  
 
CLEO®/Europe-EQEC has already announced an exciting programme of invited and keynote speakers, and a rigorous selection of top quality contributed papers from amongst over 1500 submissions has just been finalised in February.  The final programme of papers and posters will be announced on the conference website in the coming month.
 
Amongst the leading scientists whose participation has already been confirmed, for CLEO®/Europe, Professor Erich Ippen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will survey the field of ultrafast optics and its many applications, whilst for EQEC, Professor Serge Haroche from the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure in France will discuss novel results exploring the quantum nature of light. 
 
These plenary talks will be complemented by a range of other presentations from world experts in their fields.  Amongst the highlights are tutorial talks on femtosecond lasers in materials processing (Eric Mazur, Harvard University), research challenges and applications in nanophotonics (Alfred Forchel, University of Würzburg), the fascination of metamaterials (Allan Boardman, University of Salford) and recent developments in the field of optical cavity quantum electrodynamics (Gerhard Rempe, Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching). 
 
Keynote talks will cover some of these topics in more detail, and will also provide additional coverage of new and emerging areas of research.  For CLEO®/Europe, the keynote presentations include talks on visible and ultraviolet semiconductor disk lasers (Martin Dawson, University of Strathclyde), femtosecond-laser-written waveguides for communications and biophotonics (Giulio Cerullo, Politecnico di Milano), astrophotonics and observational cosmology (Joss Bland-Hawthorn, University of Sydney), and research into the new horizons of nanoplasmonics (Mark Stockman, Georgia State University).  Highlights of EQEC include keynote presentations on superoscillations and optical superresolution (Michael Berry, University of Bristol), metamaterials (Nader Engheta, University of Pennsylvania), plasmonics (Albert Polman, FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Amsterdam) and quantum information (Han Woerdman, Leiden University). 
 
Special features for 2009 include joint sessions with other conferences within the World of Photonics Congress.  Specifically, a series of invited talks surveying hot topics in biophotonics will be held with the European Conference on Biomedical Optics (ECBO), and invited talks surveying advances in fiber laser technology and applications will be held with the WLT Lasers in Manufacturing (LIM) conference.  An additional joint session with LIM on Fundamentals and Modelling of Materials Processing with Lasers has also been confirmed.   
 
A unique feature of CLEO®/Europe-EQEC will be a series of four short courses to be held on Sunday 14 June covering topics : Optical Parametric Oscillators; Plasmonics; Practical Quantum Optics; Optical Amplifiers. The website provides details of the speakers and will shortly provide details about short course and conference registration.