Some 600 scientists, engineers and technical managers will gather Sept. 8 to 12 at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue (Wash.) Hotel for the annual IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC-2013), formerly known as the IEEE LEOS Annual Meeting. This year’s conference comes in the wake of the launch this past spring of the National Photonics Initiative, a collaborative alliance among industry, academia and government experts seeking to raise awareness of the impact of photonics on our everyday lives, and of the field’s compelling business opportunities as well as the potential barriers to growth. Program highlights include: • Plenary sessions on silicon photonics for medicine, microwave quantum optics in superconducting circuits, coherent optical transceivers and bioinspired digital camera design. • General technical sessions including talks on imaging atomic vibrations, solid-state laser cooling, InP-based photonic integrated circuits and electrically pumped VCSELs on silicon. • Tutorial talks that cover the basics of photonics fields such as semiconductor optical amplifiers; VCSELs for computing applications; microwave-to-digital conversion; sensors for life sciences and medicine; optical micromanipulation; and multimode transmission. • Panel sessions and special symposia. • Networking opportunities.