Invited speakers

Prof. Vijayakumar Anand
CIPHR ERA Chair & Associate Professor of Computational Imaging

He received his Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India in 2015. He was a PBC outstanding postdoctoral fellow at Ben Gurion University, Israel from 2015-2018. From 2019 to 2021, he was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise Fellow (Nanophotonics Fellow) at Swinburne University, Australia. He has published more than 100 journal articles, conference proceedings and book chapters. He is also an author of a bestselling textbook on Design and Fabrication of Diffractive Optical Elements with MATLAB, published by SPIE press. He has been elected to the editorial board of Nature Springer Applied Physics B: Laser and Optics and Chinese Optics Letters. His current research interests include computational optics, imaging, digital holography, diffractive optics, and microfabrication.

Dr. Andi Hektor
Senior Researcher in astro-particle physics at National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics,
Chair of the Board at GScan OÜ

He has worked at the Tartu, Uppsala, Helsinki and Cambridge University and CERN, Switzerland, and is an active science and tech communicator. His main activity is to research, develop and commercialise atmospheric ray tomography for security, industry and medical applications.In the summer school, he will tell us about GScan (https://gscan.eu/), a startup company on cosmic ray tomography.

	Dr. Elmo Tempel Professor of Astronomy, member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences
He is a member of the 4MOST consortium (https://www.4most.eu/), which operates the next-generation fibre-fed spectroscopic telescope that will provide the most complete and accurate coverage of the southern sky in the coming years. In the summer school, we will hear about the capabilities of the new telescope and the consortium’s science goals.

Dr. Mihkel Pajusalu
Director of Science and Technology, Crystalspace OÜ Head of the Space Technology Department and Associate Professor in Space Technology, Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu

He received his PhD from University of Tartu in physics in 2014 and worked from 2015-2019 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA as a postdoctoral associate on space mission development and astrobiology. Then he returned to Estonia and took over the leadership of the Space Technology department at Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu in 2020 and joined Crystalspace in 2021. He is mainly interested in development of space exploration and astrobiology and all technologies needed for it including sensing technologies (cameras, light sources at Crystalspace), robotics, machine learning, and large scale industrial automation. He is also active in science popularization and is leading the jury of the Estonian Junior Science Olympiad and is the country coordinator for European Olympiad of Experimental Sciences (EOES) and International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO).

Talk title: Optical Sensing Solutions for Earth, Space and Other Worlds

Jaan Viru
CTO & Co-founder, Crystalspace OÜ
CPO & Co-founder, Biig Technologies Inc.
Member of the Council in Estonian Defence Industry Association

He is an Estonian entrepreneur & developer focusing on the Space, IoT, and Automotive sectors.
Currently, Jaan is CTO & Co-Founder at Crystalspace which develops camera systems for satellites, rovers & landers (NASA, Artemis, The Moon) for computer vision applications.
Jaan is also CPO at Biig Technologies Inc. A US-based technology company that pioneers the "BiigVault"; the smart lockbox for cars that allows users to access any car, anywhere. Providing secure access, car-based services & fleet management.
Jaan was also a co-owner in Krakul, Estonian based IoT and autonomous platforms consultancy & development partner.

Taavi Pungas
Head of Data at Starship Technologies, FÜS alumni

As the Head of Data at Starship (https://www.starship.xyz/) he is responsible for the usage of the most efficient data science practices and tools, and the application of data-oriented approaches to running the business. He also coordinates the growth of Starship in Estonia.

Dr. Andreas Valdmann
Co-founder and System Architect at LightCode Photonics,
FÜS alumni

He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Tartu, Estonia in 2019. After which he together with people from Physical Optics Laboratory in University of Tartu started LighCode Photonics which is a science-intensive deep tech company developing breakthrough technology for mobility. They are rethinking image acquisition and solving 3D imaging in a completely new way - via intelligent perception. LightCode Photonics is transforming 3D imaging from human-like perception to robotic vision - we are building the world's first Software-Defined 3D Camera (SD3D Camera). Their approach enables them to empower the existing sensors with software-defined capability and provide Lidar performance using accessible COTS components at an affordable cost.

Dr. Praveen. P. A
Post Doc Fellow in CIPHR team

He received his Ph.D. degree from the Bharathidasan University Tiruchirappalli, India in 2019.From 2019 to 2022, he was a Postdoctoral fellow at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Tirupati. He has published around 15 journal articles, conference proceedings and book chapters. He was a guest editor of SPIE optical engineering journal. His areas of expertise include Hybrid organic semiconductors, Optoelectronic Devices and Computational materials science.

Laurits Puust
MSc in material science, Optics researcher at Click and Grow/Program manager of the master's program in physics

Click & Grow is a leading company in creating home and indoor gardening solutions. His job is to develop lighting solutions for products: create a test methodology for potential LEDs used in products, explore ways to reduce light pollution with innovative optical details, which in turn would increase lamp efficiency, and test the effects of different spectral wavelengths on plant growth. In the summer school he will talk about efficient lighting solutions for plant growing equipment.

Dr. Amuthavel. J
Senior Researcher CIPHR team

He received his Ph.D. degree from the Pondicherry Public Central University, India in 2015. His research outcome includes 100+ indexed scholarly publications with more than 800+ citations, in peer-reviewed Scopus & SCI indexing reputed journals like IEEE, ACM, Springer link, Elsevier, etc. His current research interests include Computer Vision, Deep Learning, and Quantum Machine Learning.

Roman Tarask
Regional Sales Manager at Lumibird

Lumibird (https://www.lumibird.com/en/) is one of the world’s leading specialist in lasers. With 50 years of experience and expertise in 3 key technologies – solid-state lasers, laser diodes and fiber lasers – the group designs, manufactures and markets high performance lasers for the scientific (laboratories and universities), industrial (manufacturing, defence, LiDAR sensors), and medical (ophthalmology). In the summer school Roman will give an overview about the company and portfolio.