The Optica Foundation has released more information on the 2023 Optica Foundation Challenge, which is funding two research efforts from Zaijun Chen, University of Southern California, USA, and Alejandro Velez-Zea, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. Both projects are focused on improving the flow of data and information in consumer-centric technologies. Zaijun Chen’s research is focused on accelerating optical edge sensing with photonic deep learning, while Alejandro Velez-Zea’s research is focused on improving the efficiency of existing optical sensing networks. Both projects are supported by a USD$100,000 grant from the Optica Foundation.