On 7th June 2024, the AOG hosted a visit from Dr Michael Leitner, Manager System Solutions Europe at Thorlabs.
Dr Leitner was a member of the Applied Optics Group as a Marie Curie Fellow in 2008/2009, as part of his PhD within the HIRESOMI doctoral training network co-ordinated by Prof Adrian Podoleanu. After graduating he was head of OCT RECENDT, before moving to Thorlabs in 2013, where he has since held a number of increasingly senior roles in the OCT team based in Lübeck, Germany. After a tour of the labs, he gave a talk on his experiences moving from academia to industry, giving the group valuable insights into the process of taking OCT technology from the research bench to to a shippable product.