Report on the 19th optics of liquid crystals conference

The 19th Optics of Liquid Crystals Conference (OLC2021) was held from 26 September to 1 October 2021 organised by Organizing Committee OLC2021, The Japanese Liquid Crystal Society (JLCS) and The International Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS). The Organizing Committee (chaired by Professor Jun Yamamoto from Kyoto University), Local Committee, and Program Committee mainly consisted of JLCS scientists belonging to a university or a company. The International Advisory Board consisting of 11 countries has been established. Unfortunately, the biennial conference was forced to be held online because of COVID-19. The OLC is a historic international conference on liquid crystals and optics that has been held around the world since 1986, and the OLC2021 was the first OLC to be held in Asia. The OLC2021 was originally planned to be held in Bankoku Shinryokan in Okinawa, warm Islands located in the south of Japan, and to be carefully scheduled for the online/on-site hybrid implementation by the Local Committee, while also arranging hotels, conference limousine buses, and so on. However, considering the difficult situations, the OLC2021 was decided to reschedule to a fully online conference in August. Instead, those who were planning to participate on-site were given some goods related to Okinawa (Figure 1). Because the organisers carefully prepared for the online event using Zoom meeting application, I think the online conference went on without any major problems, although there were audio problems and changes in presentation time. Especially, the guidance and setting to the breakout room were smooth in both the oral and poster sessions. Further, one of the merits is that it is not affected by natural disasters (typhoons or earthquakes), which is often seen in Japan. The OLC2021 had 169 participants and 137 papers (39 invited talks, 41 contributed oral presentations and 57 poster presentations) were accepted for discussion. The online presentations were made from the UK, Italy, Slovenia, France, the USA, South Korea, Brazil, China, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Finland, Belgium, Canada, Russia and Japan. Since the OLC2021 was held from morning to evening in Japan Standard Time (JST), most of the people who could actually attend the conference on the entire schedule were from Asian countries, especially Japanese. Here, let me state a personal impression and I would like to raise a question regarding the significance of the international online conference. What I feel regretful about was that there were not so many opinions and questions from international participants at OLC2021. In particular, in the poster presentations, although the sessions were held early in the morning and in the evening considering the participants outside Asia, the audience was almost exclusively Japanese. Therefore, OLC2021 became a place for discussion in English (in some cases, in Japanese) rather than an international discussion. In the oral presentations, most of the listeners and questioners were Japanese as well. The first day of a 6-day OLC2021 began on Sunday (26 September) in JST, and a public lecture and four tutorials were held. The public lecture was also organised online, and the committee planned a programme for elementary and junior high-school students through experiences. The tutorials were given by Professor Ingo Dierking (University of Manchester) on ITO-free carbonbased electrode materials for LCDs, Professor Claudio Zannoni (University of Bologna) on computational coarse-grained and atomistic simulations of liquid crystals and the strengths and problems, Professor Slobodan Žumer (University of Ljubljana) on optical imaging of the topology of nematic defects and Professor Pawel Pieranski (Université Paris-Saclay) on collisions of nematic monopoles and disclinations. On Monday (27 September) in JST, two tutorials were given by Professor Hiroshi Yokoyama (Kent State University) on the Pancharatnam-Berry phase and sophisticated photoalignment techniques and Professor Iam-Choon Khoo (Pennsylvania State University) on liquid crystalline chiral photonic crystals working on picosecond to femtosecond scales. Fundamental concepts and approaches were summarised from various aspects, such as materials and computational sciences. In each research field, historical changes, current status and issues, and future prospects were discussed. This allowed researchers to explore new directions for their research. After the tutorials, the opening ceremony was held. Professor Yamamoto introduced Okinawa, talked about the situation of COVID-19 and typhoons in Japan, and of course, the events in OLC2021. LIQUID CRYSTALS TODAY 2021, VOL. 30, NO. 3, 46–48 https://doi.org/10.1080/1358314X.2021.2036432