Stefano Bonora - School chair

Dr Bonora is a researcher for the National Council of Research of Italy, Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology (CNR-IFN). From July 2013 is part time researcher for the CNR-IFN and part time senior research scientist for the Hilase project “High average power diode pump solid state laser” in Prague (Czech Republic) where he is responsible for the development of the adaptive optics system.
He has developed a research line in the design, realization and application of deformable mirrors and adaptive lenses. During his activity he collaborated with many foreign and Italian institutes supplying them adaptive optics systems for ultrafast laser compression and shaping, for high power laser focusing and in vivo medical imaging. 

Adaptive School Presenters Bio

C.Dainty - Institute of Ophthalmology, London (UK)

Chris Dainty is a Professorial Research Associate at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, London.  He has co-authored >180 peer-reviewed papers in various aspects of imaging, propagation and diffraction, and has contributed to adaptive optics in the past 15 years.  He has organised and participated in several summer schools and courses, and has supervised 65 PhD students.  His current research interests are in adaptive optics in the eye, and mobile imaging devices.  He is a Fellow of OSA, SPIE, IoP and EOS, and was President of The International Commission for Optics 1990-1993, EOS 2002-2004 and OSA in 2011.  He is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
S.Restaino - Naval Research Laboratory (USA)


Dr. Restaino is the Branch Head for the Radio/IR/Optical Sensor Branch of the Remote Sensing Division at the Naval Research Laboratory. He has over 20 years of experience in research in the field of Adaptive Optics, wavefront sensing and high angular imaging. He graduated from the University of Naples in 1986 and then went for his PhD at the University of Florence where he graduate in 1989. He is an active member of professional societies, especially the International Society of Photonics Engineers (SPIE) of which he is a Fellow Member.

Ulrich Wittrock - Münster University of Applied Sciences (Germany)



Ulrich Wittrock was born in 1962. He studied physics and philosophy at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, Germany, and at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA, where he received a Master's degree in physics in 1988.
He continued graduate study at the Technical University of Berlin in the group of Prof. Weber where he received his Ph.D. degree in physics in 1993. Since 1995 he is professor at Muenster University of Applied Sciences. In 2002 he spent a sabbatical at Stanford University.
Ulrich Wittrock developed several new concepts for solid state lasers. Current research activities are focussing on advanced diode-pumped solid state lasers and adaptive optics for solid state lasers and space telescopes.

Prof. Gordon Love - Durham University (UK)
Prof. Gordon Love works in the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation at Durham University (UK) and has worked on adaptive optics for over 25 years. He originally worked on astronomical instrumentation but has broadened his research to include microscopy and ophthalmic optics. He is well known for his work on liquid crystal devices in adaptive optics and also liquid crystal lenses.

Pablo Artal - University of Murcia (Spain)


Pablo Artal is Professor of Optics at the University of Murcia, Spain. He spent several periods doing collaborative research in laboratories in Europe, Australia, and the USA. He is a fellow member of The Optical Society (OSA), the European Optical Society (EOS), and The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). He received the prestigious 2013 Edwin H. Land medal award from OSA in recognition of his scientific contributions to the advancement of diagnostic and correction alternatives in visual optics. He is the recipient of an exclusive European Research Council advanced grant. He has published more than 200 reviewed papers, which have received over 6200 citations (h-index: 43), and presented more than 150 invited talks in international meetings and around 300 seminars in different research institutions. He is also a co-inventor of 18 international patents in the fields of optics and ophthalmology. He has pioneered a number of highly innovative advances in the methods for studying the optics of the eye and has contributed substantially to our understanding of the factors that limit human visual resolution. He has been the mentor of many graduate and post-doctoral students. His science blog (http://pabloartal.blogspot.com) is followed by readers, mostly graduate students and fellow researchers, from around the world. He has been topical editor of the Journal of the Optical Society of America A and is currently an associate editor of the Journal of Vision. 

Roberto Ragazzoni - Osservatorio Astronomico Padova  INAF (Italy)


Roberto Ragazzoni got his Astronomy degree at the University of Padova. He has been Research Scholar at the University of Arizona (1995) and awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Max Planck in Heidelberg (2001-2005). Astromer and Full Astronomer at Padova and Acetri Observatories. He is now full Astronomer in Padova Observatory. He conceived several kind of new wavefront sensors including the Pyramid and the Layer Oriented schemes. He has been, among the others, PI or CoPi of AdOpt@TNG (this first pyramid WFS on the sky), MAD on VLT (the first Multi Conjugated AO on the sky) and LINC/NIRVANA (currently the largest WFS in terms of FoV and physical size).


Alexis Kudriashov - Active Optics NightN Ltd. (Russia)

Alexey Kudryashov –In 1983 – graduated from Moscow State Lomonosov University and got Ph.D. in 1988 from the same University. In 1988 he start working in the Scientific Research Center for Technological Lasers Russian Academy of Sciences (Shatura, Moscow Region). In 2003 I got a Dr. of Sc. Degree in Physics. Simultaneously he was invited to I joint private Company Night N (opt) Ltd. In 2005 at the same time he got an invitation from Moscow State Open University to head the Laboratory of Adaptive Optics and department of Applied Mathematics and was honored the Professor degree. For 16 years he headed SPIE Conference on Laser Resonators (Part of Photonics West). For several years (1994-1998) he was an academic visitor at Imperial College, London. In 1996-97 he was invited to work in US, in New Mexico State University together with US AFRL (visiting Professor). In 2000 – was an Invited Professor in the Univ. of Electro Communications,  Japan. In 2002 he was invited to work in the University of Bern (Institute of Applied Physics) as а Professor. In 2013 Alexis Kudryashov founded the company AKAoptics SAS in Marseille, France. During scientific activity Alexey Kudryashov published more than 100 papers, edited 16 SPIE volumes and 2 books on laser resonators. He is a senior member of SPIE. Main field of interests – adaptive optics, laser interferometry, laser resonators.


Andrew Forbes - CSIR - National Laser Centre (South Africa) 

Andrew received his PhD (1998) from the University of Natal, and subsequently spent several years working as an applied laser physicist, first for the South African Atomic Energy Corporation and then later in a private laser company where he was Technical Director.  He is presently Chief Researcher at the CSIR National Laser Centre in South Africa and is a member of the Photonics Initiative of South Africa's Steering Committee.  Andrew sits on several international conference committees, chairs the SPIE international conference on Laser Beam Shaping and is Chair of the OSA's Holography and Diffractive Optics group. He holds honorary professorships at several local universities, is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and a Fellow of SPIE.


Martin Booth - University of Oxford (UK)


Martin Booth is a Professor of Engineering Science and is based jointly in the Department of Engineering Science and the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, at the University of Oxford, UK.  He is also a Guest Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.  His research interests cover methods and applications of dynamic optics to a range of interdisciplinary applications. In particular, his work involves the development of adaptive optics for biomedical microscopy and laser-based nano-fabrication of photonic devices. 

Robert Zawadzki - University of California Davis (USA)



Robert J. Zawadzki was born in Torun, Poland, in 1975. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in experimental physics and medical physics from the Nicolaus Copernicus University Torun, Poland, in 1998 and 2000 respectively. In 2003 he received the Ph.D. degree in natural sciences from Technical University of Vienna, Vienna Austria. In 2004 he joined the UC Davis Vision Science and Advanced Retinal Imaging (VSRI) laboratory where he is now an Associate Research Professor. In 2012 he helped co-founded UC Davis RISE EyePod laboratory where he acts now as Managing Director of this facility. He is the author of more than 60 peer-reviewed articles, and over 50 conference proceedings. Dr. Zawadzki is studying various types of retinal and optic nerve head (ONH) diseases. His research interests focus on development of new instrumentation for high-resolution in vivo retina imaging in humans and animal models of human diseases (allowing visualization and studies of individual cells). This includes, but is not limited to Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy (SLO), Adaptive Optics (AO) and combinations of all the above.


Claudia Reinlein - Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF (Germany)

Dr. Claudia Reinlein received her diploma degree in mechanical engineering from the Technical University in Ilmenau in 2006. In 2012 she received her PhD degree from the Technical University in Ilmenau for her work on the development of screen-printed deformable mirrors. A great amount of this work was carried out at die Friedrich Schiller Universität, Jena and at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) in Jena, Germany.

Since 2015 she is a Group Leader for Active Optics within the Precision Engineering Department at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany. Her current research interests are deformable mirrors for high power applications, adaptive optics for laser communication and deformable mirrors for high-energy applications. 

She published more than 23 papers in international journals and conference proceedings. Further, she has project management experience with large national and international joint research projects. And currently, she is a project manager of an international technology development project issued by the European Space Agency ESA. 


Carl Paterson - Imperial College London (UK)