The Technical Conference Program
OFC’s five-day, technical conference features a plenary session with esteemed industry luminaries, peer-reviewed presentations and more than 130 invited and tutorial speakers, representing thought leaders across the industry. Additional technical programming throughout the week includes workshops, special programs, short courses, Demo Zone and special events.
Short Courses
Short Courses cover a broad range of topic areas at a variety of educational levels, and are taught by highly-regarded industry experts on a number of subjects. Whether you choose a course designed for beginners or for more advanced instruction, the small size of each class gives you an excellent opportunity for personalized instruction. Registrants receive a copy of the course notes, which will be distributed onsite. There is a small additional fee to register for a short course.
Workshops
OFC Workshops address cutting-edge and practical challenges facing the industry. They are focused, interactive sessions that bring together researchers, industry experts and practitioners to discuss, debate, and explore emerging and time-critical topics. Unlike formal paper presentations, Workshops are designed to foster discussion, share diverse perspectives and examine challenges and opportunities in specific areas of technology. These sessions typically feature multiple speakers and panel-style interactions.
Demo Zone, Datasets and Machine Learning Challenge
Featuring live demonstrations of research projects and proof-of-concept implementations in the space of optical communications devices, systems and networks. New to the Demo Zone this year is the introduction of Dataset Papers and the Machine Learning Challenge, a collaborative platform for researchers, scholars, and practitioners from academia and industry to develop, evaluate and showcase ML techniques applied to diverse datasets collected from real-world optical devices, platforms, and networks. Demonstrations occur in dedicated booths in the Demo Zone as part of the OFC technical program.
Special Programs
Includes three Symposia, ten Panels, Special Sessions and the Rump Session. Each comprised of invited presentations on areas deemed to be of special interest to OFC conference attendees.
Special Events
Make the most of your attendance at OFC with a range of networking and educational events. Special events range from Hack Your Research to receptions to career development programs.