The 25^th OECC (Optoelectronics and Communications Conference) was held in Taipei this year. The general chairs of this year’s conference, Prof. San-Liang Lee, is a professor from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. The other general chair is Dr. Yuan-Kuang Tu of Chunghwa Telecom, the largest telecom company in Taiwan. The conference can trace back its root in 1996, and was first held in Japan. Since then, it became a major technical conference for Asian photonic community. There are eight different tracks in this conference:

Track (1) Core/access networks and switching systems

Track (2) Transmission systems and subsystems

Track (3) Optical Fibers, Cables, Devices and Modules

Track (4) Optical active devices and modules

Track (5) Optical passive devices and modules

Track (6) Integrated Photonics and Nanophotonics

Track (7) Biomedical and Optical Sensing

Track (8) Machine Learning/ AI, Quantum Communication/ Computing, and others

This conference marks the first major event since the spread of COVID-19, and thus it attracts very much attention. The organizing committee worked very hard to meet the requirements from the prevention of the disease. Three different formats of presentation were planned: face-to-face, live-streaming, and pre-recorded video. Complicated control systems are needed to operate each session, but I believe all the efforts are worthwhile. The conference, as shown in the tracks of interests, focus more on the photonic devices (active or passive) and optical communication systems. During the session, we saw a very good discussion between the speakers and audiences. Together with regular sessions, we also had several special symposiums and workshops. They covered the areas like:

l   The 60th Laser Anniversary Symposium

l   Silicon photonics in Taiwan

l   Historical Review Symposium of Optical Communications 25th anniversary of OECC and 50th anniversary of Optical Fiber Communications

l   AI in Optical Networks

l   Photonics Integrations

l   Challenging beyond

l   5G of Optical Access & Transport Technology

These specific topics broadened the viewpoints of this conference and raise a lot of interests from industrial professionals. There are about 400 professionals attending this conference, and among them, there are about 240 people from foreign countries or regions. In the conference, there are about 180 talks were delivered, and 100 posters were presented.

Several key exhibition booths were also set up in the venue. The conference was held in HNBK International Convention Center that is located in the financial district of Taipei city with easy access to public transportation and hotels.