Five years of the European Adaptive Optics Summer School

Journal article

Adaptive optics (AO) is developed and used in a range of application areas, from observing microscopic cells to distant galaxies. While the implementation and challenges are different between field, the basic principles of AO are common. In 2019 we began to develop the European Adaptive Optics Summer School with the aim of bringing together students and researchers from across the range of AO domains to learn and develop connections with one another. The first school took place in 2021 and after three years running virtually, we moved to an in-person school with hybrid attendance. This has taken place at the Institut d’Optique Graduate School in Palaiseau, France for the last two years and will be held at the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation (CfAI) in Durham, UK in 2026. This paper presents a summary of the school, both in remote and hybrid format. We describe the motivations for the school, the training provided, and a short analysis of the demographics of the school, and how this has changed over the last five years.

Authors: Young, LK; Kulcsár, C; Hampson, TM; Booth, M; Hu, Q

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anita Publication
• Journal: Asian Journal of Physics
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 5-6
• Pages: A1-A13
• Publication date: 2025-11-24
• Acceptance date: 2025-09-05
• ISSN: 0971-3093
• Language: English
• Keywords: adaptive optics; microscopy; telescope operators; vision science; retinal imaging