Photonics manufactured in over half the UK’s parliamentary constituencies
Photonics is manufactured in over half the UK’s parliamentary constituencies, with 20 MPs due to represent areas where over 500 people are employed locally in photonics
British and Irish Conference on Optics and Photonics opens Wednesday
The second edition of BICOP opens on Wednesday highlighting advances in Optical and Quantum communications along with Lasers, Interconnects, Sensors and Photonics manufacturing. Prof. Sir David Payne and Prof. Sir Peter Knight, will deliver the keynote addresses on Wednesday and Thursday with the latest insights on ‘Devices, Datacom and Data’ and ‘Progress with Photonics-enabled Quantum…
The Road to 2.4 per cent
The PLG welcomes a new report from the King’s College London’s Policy Institute by David Willetts, former Minister of State for Universities and Science on “The Road to 2.4%” -the target for the fraction of GDP invested in science and research . The report makes a clear case for increasing support for enabing technologies (such…
Photonics features strongly at the 2019 IOP annual awards
The Institute of Physics 2019 awards presented on 18 November recognised outstanding contributions in many areas of photonics including: Professor Donna Stickland, University of Waterloo- Honary Fellowship for her pioneering method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses. Matoha Instrumentation – Business Start-Up Award for the development of a low-cost small-scale infrared materials identification and analysis…
Photonics21 Annual Meeting set for May2020
For 2020 the Photonics21 annual meeting will take place 27-28 of May. Two months later than its traditional slot at the end of March. Whilst the focus of the annual meeting will be on the next framework programme, Horizon Europe, the current Horizon 2020 programme is not quite finished. The final photonics calls in Horizon…
Commercialising quantum technologies- round 2
The latest competition from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) commercialising quantum technologies challenge will award up to £30million to industry led projects addressing technological barriers to the commercial exploitation of quantum technologies. Projects should exploit second generation quantum techniques (superposition) in one or more of the challenge areas of: Connectivity Situation awareness Quantum computing…
Last chance to respond to consultation on post-ECSEL partnership
The European Commission has opened a public consultation on the 12 proposed Institutionalised European Partnerships under the future Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme (2021-2027). In particular, the consultation focuses on the overall need for and the planned focus of these potential European Partnerships. This will include Key Digital Technologies and integrated photonics may fall…
New UK research agency and uplift in RandD funding in Queens speech
The Queen’s Speech contained important new announcements on research and innovation funding. Extracted from ‘THE QUEEN’S SPEECH AND ASSOCIATED BACKGROUND BRIEFING, ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT ON MONDAY 14 OCTOBER 2019′. Science, space and infrastructure “My Government is committed to establishing the United Kingdom as a world-leader in scientific capability and space…
Regional distribution of Photonics productivity
Further analysis of the UK photonics industry provides a regional breakdown of industry productivity measured through gross value added to the economy per photonics employee. UK Photonics total output was £13.5billion in 2018 with a total gross value added* (GVA) to the economy estimated to be £5.3billion. At an average gross value add per photonics…
UK Photonics companies are larger than average
Or more correctly there are relatively more larger companies in photonics than standard in manufacturing. On going analysis of the UK photonics industry shows that the fraction of UK photonics operations which are small, medium or large by employment is significantly higher than in UK engineering or manufacturing sectors*. Only 50% of photonics operations employ…