Dennis Gabor’s first demonstration of holography in 1948 stimulated the development of fielded analog optical computers within a decade. Yet today — despite order-of-magnitude improvements in computational power and wavefront modulation capability — practical holography remain elusive, often overshadowed by stagecraft illusions like Pepper’s Ghost. This talk will explore the discrepancy by providing a perspective on the past, present, and future of programmable free-space optics. Using our recent development of high-speed spatial light modulators and the open-source software that it inspired as examples, I will argue that hardware/software co-design is required to overcome holography’s significant technical challenges. The resulting roadmap paves the way towards impactful applications across computing, communications, and fundamental science that will leverage these advances while, reciprocally, inspiring the next generation of software-defined optics.

Chris is a Naval cryptologist seeking to solve complex national security issues. He is a 2022 graduate from MIT’s Quantum Photonics and AI Group, where he developed gigahertz-rate spatial light modulators, open-source holography software, and a new class of wavelength-scale optical sensors operating at their fundamental thermal noise limits. As a founding member of the slmsuite development team, his current research focuses on accessible, high-performance computational holography algorithms for applications ranging from brain imaging to quantum science. His work has received various recognitions to include the Hertz Foundation Fellowship, the APS Carl E. Anderson Award, and MIT’s Jin Au Kong PhD Thesis Award in EECS.