Switchable silicon photonics with extremely low power consumption is critical for next-generation flexible optical interconnects. This plenary talk presents recent advances, covering both volatile and non-volatile MEMS silicon photonic switches/filters, as well as volatile and non-volatile PZT-based optical switches and modulators. Utilizing mechanical actuation and piezoelectric effects offer promising approaches to achieve low-power-consumption silicon photonic chips, paving the way for high-scalability and energy-efficient photonic integrated circuits as desired for various applications.

Quantum computation has captivated the minds of many for almost two decades. For much of that time, it was seen mostly as an extremely interesting scientific problem. In the last years, the belief has grown that a large-scale quantum computer can actually be built. Quantum bits encoded in the spin state of individual electrons confined in transistor-like nanoscale devices, have emerged as a highly promising direction, which gained strong momentum in the last few years. We will summarize the key concepts behind semiconductor qubits, present a vision of a large-scale spin-based quantum processor, and recent progress towards realizing this vision.