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Conference Updates

Online Minisymposium - December 8, 2025

Join us online on December 8, 2025 for a minisymposium to kick off the next Nonimaging Optics conference! We will feature three invited talks, the launch of our call for papers, and the introduction of next year’s optical design competition.

The symposium runs from 15:00-17:00 CET and is free and open to everyone. See the symposium page for more details and registration.

Online Minisymposium

2025 Conference Proceedings Available Online

The complete proceedings from our 2025 conference are now available online. This peer-reviewed collection includes both papers and presentation recordings from the 20th anniversary conference.

You can access the proceedings through our proceedings page. We have also assembled a list of all previous conference proceedings of this conference series, so that you can explore the rich history of the conference.

Thank you to everyone who made this year’s conference a success, and we look forward to seeing you at next year’s event!

2025 Conference Wrap-Up

We just wrapped up the XX anniversary of the Nonimaging Optics conference at SPIE Optics + Photonics! It was a fantastic two days filled with inspiring talks by familiar and new faces. Thank you to everyone who made this happen, and to everyone who attended!

This year’s Best Student and Postdoc Presentation Award was a tie! Congratulations to both Wai Qian Tham from Trinity College Dublin, and Zijun Zhang from Zhejiang University for their excellent presentations!

We congratulate Ludo Haenen from Signify for the overall best submission to our Optical Design Competition, achieving an impressive efficiency of 53.3%, and Alex Lehmann from UNSW for the best submission among conference attendees, with an impressive efficiency of 31.4%!

We look forward to meeting you all again at the 2026 conference! Let’s build upon our optical momentum, continue to grow our etendue, and keep this field going strong to tackle new challenges in energy, illumination, and beyond!

Best Student and Postdoc Presentation Award Winners

Best Student and Postdoc Presentation Award winners Wai Qian Tham and Zijun Zhang receive their awards.

Design Competition Winner

Alex Lehmann receiving the Design Competition award for best submission among conference attendees

In Memory Session

This year’s conference was dedicated to the memory of Roland Winston

Opening Session in Memory of Professor Roland Winston

The opening session of this year’s Nonimaging Optics Conference will be dedicated to the memory of Professor Roland Winston, who passed away in February this year at the age of 88. Roland founded the field of Nonimaging Optics, and his influence is felt by many of us both professionally and personally.

Do you have a personal memory of working with Roland, or a reflection on how his work impacted you? We invite you to share it as an email to us at [email protected], and we will include it into the session. There will also be an opportunity to share stories in person during the session.

We look forward to hearing your memories, and hope to see you in San Diego on Aug 4-5.

Roland Winston with his research team

Professor Roland Winston with his research team.

Competition Deadline Extended

Are you working hard to finish your design for the XX Challenge? We are happy to announce that we are giving you some final days to wrap up and test your design.

Happy designing, and may the best design guide you back to earth!

Extended Deadline: May 18th, 2025

Competition hero