DL Prof. Rajesh Menon: From Photons to Information: Co-Designed Imaging Systems for Seeing More
Abstract:
Conventional cameras capture only a small fraction of the information carried by light. Rich properties such as spectrum, polarization, depth, coherence, and fast temporal dynamics are typically discarded, or require bulky instruments and sequential measurements to recover.
In this talk, I will describe a different approach to imaging in which photonics, sensors, and computational algorithms are designed together to capture much more of the information available from a scene. Inverse-designed and unconventional optical elements can encode otherwise inaccessible physical information directly into sensor measurements, while computational methods, including machine learning, decode these measurements into high-dimensional images. When combined with emerging sensor technologies such as event-based cameras, this approach can also capture dynamics at timescales far beyond those accessible to conventional frame-based imaging.
I will present examples spanning spectral and polarization imaging, ultrafast sensing, computational microscopy, and compact flat-optics systems, with applications ranging from biomedical imaging and industrial inspection to remote sensing and astronomy. More broadly, these results point toward a transition from cameras designed primarily to form images to information-aware imaging systems that jointly optimize the physics and computation for the information (or task) that ultimately matters. Such systems offer new opportunities to dramatically reduce size, weight, power, data volume, and latency while expanding what cameras can measure.
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- Korkeakoulunkatu 10
- Tampere, Vastra Finlands Lan
- Finland FI-33014
- Building: Tietotalo
- Room Number: TB104
- Starts 08 September 2026 09:00 PM UTC
- Ends 17 September 2026 09:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Agenda
Bio:
Rajesh Menon is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Univ. of Utah and Chief Technology Officer of Oblate Optics, which is commercializing flat-optics technologies pioneered in his laboratory. His research combines nanofabrication, computational design, and optical engineering to develop inverse-designed photonics, flat lenses, and unconventional imaging systems. He holds more than 45 patents, has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, and has co-founded four technology companies to translate research advances into practical technologies. He is a Fellow of Optica and SPIE, and a Member of the National Academy of Inventors. His honors include the ICO Prize, NASA Early-Stage Innovations Award, NSF CAREER Award, and IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lectureship. Rajesh earned his S.M. and Ph.D. from MIT and collaborates extensively with academic, industry, and government partners worldwide.