Darwin Palima is Associate Professor in the Department of Photonics Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark where he teaches a course he created on Biophotonics and Optical engineering. He has pioneered new scientific directions at the programmable phase optics laboratory and, as lab responsible, closely mentors the group's PhD students and postdocs. He collaborates extensively with Jesper Gluckstad from joint supervision of PhD students to joint authorships of scientific papers, conference presentations, patent applications, and popular articles. Having authored a physics textbook before moving to Denmark, he played a key role in their jointly authored monograph on Generalized Phase Contrast. The present volume is another product of their collaboration. Darwin concurrently taught at the Philippine Science High School when he worked through his PhD at the University of the Philippines proposing improvements to computer-generated holography. His interest in structured light started in the mid-90s when he studied optical vortices for his BSc thesis.
