Univ. of Southampton Announces Future Photonics Hub Industry Day

The Future Photonics Hub Industry Day is Sept. 20, 2018, at the University of Southampton. It aims to unite the U.K.’s science base with companies, R&D organizations, and funding agencies. It will showcase the latest research in new, practical, and commercial photonics manufacturing technologies.

Industry Day will give attendees the chance to collaborate and develop innovative solutions to industrial grand challenges.

Keynote speaker Dr. Benn Thomsen of Microsoft Research will address how cloud computing is driving the growth in data center computing and network infrastructure, creating the need 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 computer resources that exploit optics,” Thomsen said. “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.”

Further sessions will cover progress in silicon photonics, advanced materials, optical fibers, and lasers from leading researchers.

The Future Photonics Hub is an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-funded future manufacturing research hub, which aims to explore photonic integration across all major technology platforms. It works with partners and end-users across a wide range of industries to reduce costs and improve cross-platform capability, reliability, and yield.