Hi all,
This could be a nice talk / discussion session for some here =).
Sebastiaan
From: Lukas Welzel <welzel@strw.leidenuniv.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, 6 May 2026 14:27
To: haffert@strw.leidenuniv.nl; tonucci@strw.leidenuniv.nl
Subject: Fwd: ML Coffee - Photonic Computing for AI - May 8th
Dear Sebastiaan and Elena,
As mentioned a few weeks ago, we will have an invited talk on Photonic Computing for AI at the Observatory’s Machine Learning Coffee this Friday from 14:00 to 15:00.
Could you please share this with your group, and with anyone in the wider Leiden Observatory instrumentation group who might be particularly interested? The full announcement is forwarded below.
Many thanks in advance.
Best,
Lukas
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: | [ML-journalcub] ML Coffee - Photonic Computing for AI - May 8th |
Date: | Wed, 6 May 2026 14:15:25 +0200 |
From: | Lukas Welzel <welzel@strw.leidenuniv.nl> |
To: |
Hi everyone,
We will have this week's Machine Learning Coffee in room BW.4.34a (Arcturus) on Friday, May 8, from 14:00 to 15:00.
We are happy to welcome Ir. Bas Ketelaar from the Quantum Nanoscience group at TU Delft, who will give a talk titled “Photonic Computing for Artificial Intelligence”. The abstract is included below.
As traditional digital electronic computing approaches its limits, while the demand for computation continues to grow, there is an increasing interest in novel computing paradigms. One promising solution comes from using light to do computation. Photonics offers potential benefits in terms of bandwidth, latency, and energy consumption. One field where such benefits are relevant is that of AI. I will give a broad overview of how light can be used to do computation, focusing on how to implement neural networks with integrated photonics.
You can also join the Machine Learning Coffee online using:
https://universiteitleiden.zoom.us/j/61539293608?pwd=76wwg3n9xGheL0zEb9hw8LXiO5uH9B.1
See you on Friday!
Best,
Lukas
--
Lukas Welzel (he/him/his)
PhD candidate
Leiden Observatory