Series of lectures on Neural Networks

June 30th & July 1st

FEMTO-ST - TEMIS BUILDING - Amphi JJ Gagnepain

Abstract

Alternative approaches to digital computing are gaining substantial traction. This is on one hand motivated by the rapidly approaching fundamental limits to classical, digital electronic computing on one hand, and on the fascinating possibilities arising from data-driven computing as popularized by artificial neural networks. Due to their fundamental advantages in signal transduction over electronic systems, optical computing is seen as particularly promising alternatives in computing concepts that required massive volumes of data movements, among others artificial neural network (i.e. AI) concepts or concepts that leverage the complex evolution of network states in order to optimize a solution such as protein folding or the travelling sales-person.

About the lecturers

Prof. Shastri is a Canada Research Chair, an Associate Professor of Engineering Physics at Queen’s University, and a Member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the Scientific Co-Director of NUCLEUS, a pan-Canadian photonic computing program. Dr. Shastri was named a 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Physics and, in 2024, was recognized by Science News as one of its 10 Scientists to Watch. He received the 2022 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award and the 2020 Young Scientist Prize in Optics by the International Commission of Optics (ICO) “for his pioneering contributions to neuromorphic photonics”. He is a co-author of the book Neuromorphic Photonics (Taylor & Francis, 2017), a term he co-coined.

Daniel Brunner is a CNRS researcher with the FEMTO-ST, France. His interests include novel computing using quantum or nonlinear substrates with a focuses on photonic neural networks. He was received several University and the IOP’s 2010 Roys prize, the IOP Journal Of Physics: Photonics emerging leader 2021 prize as well as the CNRS Bronze medal in 2022. He edited one Book and three special issues, has presented his results 60+ times upon invitation, has published 70+ scientific articles, has been awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator grant and is a pilot of the French PEPR Electronique project of the France 2030 initiative.