The proposal presents a new family of photonic devices that work by simultaneously designing both the optical system and the image-processing algorithms, thus enabling digital light control through programmable megapixel spatial light modulators. Together, the optics and the algorithms can achieve things that neither could do alone. A hot topic that operates taking advantage of the above point of view is compressive sampling that enables to recover the image of an object that is deep inside a scattering media at practicable frame rates in a single-pixel camera, thus rendering hidden objects visible. In a completely different scenario, adaptive correction of spatial and temporal distortions of femtosecond pulses at the focus enables high-precision processing of transparent materials such as in ophthalmic fs-surgery by minimizing nonlinear side effects such as self-focusing, filamentation or white-light generation.

This research will result in a new generation of data-driven, physics-aware and task-orientated photonic systems in emerging sensing modalities. In this sense, the proposal will deploy new instrumentation to break frontiers in high-resolution imaging through scattering media, reaching regions inside the sample deeper than the millimetre as well as monitoring fast events requiring sampling rates above the kilohertz, and in imaging with a small number of photons, getting high-quality images of objects under photon exposure lower than the limit of 10⁵ photons per pixel required in digital cameras based on multi-megapixel arrays. The research will also provide new devices for the emerging field of laser-targeted, environmentally friendly photofabrication of nanofluids, where computational optics will allow gaining control over the laser ablation mechanism at the nanoscale and, as a result, over the size and distribution of the colloidal nanoparticles. We target the fabrication of nanofluids that can be utilized as volumetric radiation absorbers and flowing heat transfer mediums in applications as solar energy harvesting as well as the fabrication of the high-quality gold nanoparticles needed for labeling and sensing in biomedicine.