Meet the Session Chair
Amirhossein
Ghods
Vice President of Photonics, Mesa Quantum — chairing SPIE DS26 Session 6.
SPIE 2026
Early Career
Achievement
Award
Industry · Govt
"Pioneering manufacturable next-generation VCSEL platforms" — across quantum, biomedical, and dual-use sensing for industry and defense.
— SPIE Award Citation, 2026
The story
Amir leads Mesa Quantum's photonics team, directing development of manufacturable VCSEL platforms for quantum timing and magnetometry — incorporating linewidth-narrowing cavity structures, polarization-stable emission, and temperature-hardened packaging. His work spans quantum and classical sensing across lidar, 3D imaging, biomedical sensing, and quantum-optimized VCSELs for chip-scale atomic sensors.
Prior to Mesa Quantum, at ams OSRAM, he led design and epitaxial development of the first fully qualified multijunction VCSELs and pioneered architectures achieving the world's highest single-mode VCSEL output power. He has authored or co-authored 10 SPIE conference papers since 2017 and contributes to Photonics Focus magazine.
The Session
Photonic-Electronics
& Hybrid Platforms
30 April 2026
10:45 — 12:45 EDT
Potomac 5 · National Harbor
Mesa Quantum at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2026 — exploring the integrated photonic-electronic systems shaping defense AI and RF computing.
- 01
Co-Packaged Optics-FPGA-Memory-Power System integration
Ramana Pamidighantam
- 02
Thin-film lithium niobate advances
Sasan Fathpour
- 03
ITO-based photonic circuits
Hamed Dalir
- 04
Precision photonics integration for defense AI
Rayhane Ghane
- 05
Workload-aware thermal optimization in co-packaged optics
Dewan Saiham
Find Amir at Potomac 5 — April 30, 10:45 AM EDT.