Hub Industry Day announces full speaker programme

The Future Photonics Hub Industry Day, taking place on 20 September 2018 at the University of Southampton, aims to unite the UK’s excellent science base with companies, R&D organisations and funding agencies; and showcase the latest research in new, practical and commercial photonics manufacturing technologies.

Set to be a stimulating event, the Industry Day will create many opportunities for attendees to collaborate and develop innovative solutions to industrial grand challenges.

A highlight of the event is the keynote speaker, Dr Benn Thomsen of Microsoft Research, who joins the programme of invited speakers and expert scientists presenting in a series of five sessions on key photonics technology platforms.

In his opening keynote speech, ‘Opportunities and challenges for photonics in the cloud’, Benn will address how cloud computing is driving a phenomenal growth in data centre computing and network infrastructure, and the openings that this creates for photonics-based solutions: “At Microsoft we are inventing future, non-legacy-based technologies to empower the next generation of the cloud; by creating new types of storage, network and compute resources that exploit optics. In this talk I will try to put some of these challenges into context and give a glimpse into some of the things we are currently working on in the photonics space.”

‘Opportunities for UK photonics’ is a major theme for the day and the focus an afternoon session in which invited speakers Ben Whitaker, Innovation Partner at the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) Georgios Papadakis, Innovate UK’s Innovation Lead for Electronics, Sensors and Photonics Dr John Lincoln, CEO of the Photonics Leadership Group present their inputs on the topic.

Further sessions will cover progress in silicon photonics, advanced materials, optical fibres and lasers from leading researchers including Professors David Richardson and Graham Reed, discussing solutions for next-generation data communications; and Professors Nikolay Zheludev and Dan Hewak discussing the volume manufacturing of 2D and metamaterials.

The opening and closing of the programme will be given by Professor Sir David Payne, Director of the Hub and Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC).

The Industry Day is aimed at those working in research, the photonics industry or in one of the many industries enabled by photonics, and offers plenty of opportunities for networking in the welcome brunch and packed exhibition which runs throughout the event. Attendees also have the chance for one-to-one meetings with key investigators and to tour Southampton’s £120M cleanroom complex.

Further information on the event can be found here. Registration is free and closes on 9 September 2018 at 23:30.