PRE’22-Poland

After the event held in Mexico in August 2022, the second opportunity to convene for the scientific community working on the photoluminescence of rare-earth-doped materials was constituted by the PRE'22-Poland (Photoluminescence in Rare Earths: Photonic Materials) Workshop, which run from 11 to 14 September 2022 in the beautiful mountain town of Szczawnica, in Southern Poland.

Like the slightly earlier PRE'22-Mexico, this event, too, was held jointly with a larger international conference. Here, the brother materials community was that of ICMS (International Conference on Molecular Spectroscopy). The sessions of ICMS and PRE’22-Poland were held independently, but included joint meetings ensuring the integration of the communities of the two scientific areas.

The joint event successfully overcame organizational issues caused by the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine (more than 6 million refugees from Ukraine have crossed borders into Poland since February 2022, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency).

The venue of the joint event was the Hotel Szczawnica Park Resort & SPA, and the scientific program included 30 oral lectures (2 keynote, 10 invited) and 23 poster presentations, with a very active participation of young scientists. Lively discussions and personal meetings were clearly enjoyed during the event. We are convinced that the PRE'22-Poland Workshop resulted in the exchange of many novel luminous ideas and will strengthen the cooperation among the members of our scientific community.

The Workshop was sponsored by the Photonics Society of Poland (PSP) and the Polish Technological Platform on Photonics (PPTF). In addition, thanks to the generous support by the International Commission on Glass (ICG) through the TC-20 Technical Committee and by the Italian Society of Optics and Photonics (SIOF), five students were awarded a prize for their brilliant oral (2) and poster (3) presentations. You can see the names and a photo of the awardees at the ICG-SIOF Student Awards web page. Some pictures taken during the Workshop are shown in the Photo Gallery web page.

We trust that, after this difficult period,the PRE Workshops will be continuing in the traditional way, attracting a large number of academic, research and industry participants from everywhere.

It has been disclosed that very likely the next PRE Workshop, the 10th in the series, in 2024, will be held in Italy, exactly in Trento, where the first event had been held in 2005!

We hope to meet you in person in 2024!

Anna Lukowiak, Dominik Dorosz, Maurizio Ferrari
Symposium Co-chairs

Giancarlo C. Righini
Honorary Chair