Special commemorative issue from the general world congress ICO-25-OWLS-16-Dresden-Germany-2022-Advancing Society with Light

This special issue of JEOS:RP offers a great opportunity to looking back to the general world congress for optics and photonics ICO-25-OWLS-16 of the International Commission for Optics (ICO) and the international society for Optics Within Life Sciences (OWLS), which was celebrated in-person after two postponements from 5th to 9th September 2022 at the TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany. The general world congress was sponsored by ICO, OWLS, and TU Dresden, and financially co-sponsoring by the DGaO – The German Branch of EOS, Carl Zeiss AG, OPTICA (The society advancing optics and photonic worldwide, formerly OSA), SPIE (The International Society for Optics and Photonics – Connect Minds and Advance Light), Photonics Society of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), IUPAP (The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics) and the City of Dresden. The EOS (European Optical Society), LAM (African Laser, Atomic and Molecular Physics Network), and RIAO (The Iberian American Network on Optics) have technically co-sponsored the general world congress. Preparations for the general world congress were underway immediately after the ICO-24 in Tokyo, Japan, 2017, but had to be halted in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The general world congress was postponed to 2021, but could not be held again. Luckily, due to a wise decision by ICO, there was no switch to digital presentation. Great efforts have been made to increase the number of female speakers with extraordinary commitment of the international Technical Program Committee (TPC), especially by Wolfgang Osten. The outstanding engagement of Frank Hoeller, Associate Secretary of ICO from 2017 to 2021, has to be highlighted. The ICO mourns his passing away and the participants thought with a moment of silence. To commemorate of Frank Hoeller, the DGaO exhibited a poster at the congress. Most hurdles were taken together with the commitment of the worldwide network of sponsors and co-sponsors, the TPC, especially the program chairs Wolfgang Osten and Alexander Heisterkamp, the fundraising chair Michael Pfeffer, and the adviser Bernd Kleemann, and the unbelievable commitment of the local team, especially from the chairs of the local team Nektarios Koukourakis and Lars Buettner. “Optics & Photonics for a better World” is the motto of ICO with the objective to contribute, on an international basis, to the progress of the science of optics and photonics and their applications with emphasizes the unity of the crossdisciplinary field of optics. We thank the Secretary General Humberto Michinel and the President John C. Howell for the sustainable decisions and trust. We acknowledge the crucial support of TU Dresden too. The worldwide General Congress was celebrated with participants from 55 countries of 5A (Africa, Asia, Australia, America and Amazing Europe). For the first time in the history of ICO, a joint General World Congress was celebrated together with OWLS. Memorable in-person talks by three Nobel Laurates were presented. Gérard Mourou, Nobel prize 2018, titled “Extreme Light for the Benefit of Science and Society”, Stefan W Hell, Nobel prize 2014, titled “Optical Microscopy: The Resolution Revolution”, and Reinhard Genzel, Nobel prize 2020, titled “A 40-Years Journey”. The two-page summaries of the tasks and poster have been published on the website http://ico25.org/. In this special issue it is our great pleasure to present six extended papers. Pieter H Neethling et al. presents in the great paper “Novel time-resolved CARS implementation for application in microscopy” a spatial light modulator-based temporal compression for Coherent Anti-stokes Raman Spectroscopy (CARS). The exciting paper “Evaluation of a Time-Gated-SinglePixel-Camera as a Promising Sensor for Autonomous Vehicles in Harsh Weather Conditions” by Claudia Bett et al. discusses new application areas of Single-Pixel-Cameras for automotive application. Dennis Pohle et al. presents in the visionary paper “Intelligent self-calibration tool for adaptive few-mode fiber multiplexers using multiplane light conversion” a digital twin approach for adaptive mode multiplexing in fibers, Advancing Society with Light, a special issue from general congress ICO-25-OWLS-16-Dresden-Germany-2022