A successful event with interesting and promising discussions and more than 300 attendees ended at the evening of December 9th at the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Brussels, Belgium.

The Board of Stakeholders elected Giorgio Anania, Chairman of Cube Optics AG, as a third vice-

president, Eckhard Meiners, Managing Director of TRUMPF Laser Marking Systems AG, as the new chair of workgroup 2, following Peter Leibinger who stepped down as chair of WG 2 and finally Klaas Vegter, Chief Technology Officer Philips Lighting, as new chair of Workgroup 4, following Peter Stromberg, who as well resigned.

Five new members have been elected to the Board of Stakeholders: Hans-Joachim Grallert, Professor for Telecommunications at the Technical University of Berlin, Eckhard Meiners, Managing Director of TRUMPF Laser Marking Systems AG, Jürgen Popp, Scientific Director at the Institute of Photonic Technology Jena, Klaas Vegter, Chief Technology Officer Philips Lighting and Berit Wessler, Head of the Innovations Management at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors.

At the evening reception 300 members - many of them in high positions of photonics companies and institutes - met in a convenient atmosphere and had time to network and discuss.

Day two started with the opening by EU-Commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for information, society and media. She underlined that Photonics is one of the principal motors of growth and driver of efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector and one of the means of raising the quality of life of our citizens. To further improve the political support she invited the members of Photonics 21 to submit fitting proposals for the FP7 Programme and the future FP8 Programme to guarantee that this economic relevant sector is and will be well considered in those funding programmes.

Malcolm Harbour, Member of the European Parliament, welcomed the foundation of European technology platforms per se and sees Photonics21 as a very good example for a successful established ETP with great involvement and enormous interest in interactions. It will be one of his aims to further increase the European budget for research & development in the photonics sector.

OITDA (Optoelectronic Industry and technology development association) chief manager Kimio Tatsuno pointed out the development potential and the importance of the photonics industry for the future. He demonstrated impressively that the photonics market in Japan keeps growing in a green digital economy with new service creation due to the global warming issue.

After splitting up work groups, the Photonics21 members met in the afternoon to discuss the strategy for 2009.

Presentations held at the Annual Meeting are available now:

The doors of the ICT - the most important forum for discussing research and public policy in information and communication technologies at European level - in Lyon are closed. With over 4,500 visitors a successful event for the European Commission.

Photonics21 was well recognized and had many contacts to interested new members from different application fields. There is as well a large interest of visitors from non-European countries to join Photonics21. The Strategic Research Agenda and the Economic Impact of Photonics21 have appealed general approval. Nearly 200 of each of these documents have been disseminated.

The FP7 coordination and support action “Phorce21” - Photonics Research Coordination Europe - was prepared to provide logistical support to the Photonics21 activities.

This way the platform secretariat which so far worked on a voluntary basis will be able to improve its services to Photonics21 members. Apart from the Photonics21 secretariat located at the VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH (project coordinator), the Phorce21 consortium consists of following members: Nederlandse Organisatie Voor Toegepast-Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek TNO, NL; Enterprise Ireland, IE; Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum, IMEC, BE; European Optical Society, Promouvoir La Vallee De L'optique, OpticsValley, FR. Phorce21 will support Photonics21 activities at all levels, this includes:

• organisation of platform events
• improved communication and dissemination of up to date information to all Photonics21 members (including comprehensive information on news or events of relevance to the European Photonics community news)
  • relaunched website with improved services to members
  • newsletter in a new design and additional information
• improving the visibility of the Photonics topic in opinion forming media
• improve transparency of Photonics in Europe, e.g. collection of information on European Photonics research and industry capabilities
• preparation of strategic documents (logistical support)
• assistance in starting cooperation with non-European partner organisation
• trigger cooperation on Photonics education in Europe

Phorce21 has started in July 2008. For further information please contact Markus Wilkens at secretariat@photonics21.

In the last issue of OLE (October 2008) Arnold Mayer, Optech Consulting and Alistair Wilson, Photonics Transfer Network UK, were asked about the future market development of photonics in Europe.

They both pointed out the importance of cooperation in the field of Photonics in Europe and the advantages of having a European technology platform like Photonics21 for the whole European photonics value chain.

“I believe strongly in the importance of association...and Europe has long needed a pan-European organization such as Photonics21. At last Europe has one voice and can communicate with organizations such as Optoelectronic Industry and Development Association (OIDA) in the US and the Optoelectronic Industry Technology and Development Association (OITDA) in Japan”, Wilson emphasized the relevancy of the platform Photonics21.

Representing more than 1.000 members from industry, research and politics the Photonics21 Annual Meeting has become the major event to the European Photonics community.

The 3rd Annual Meeting of the platform Photonics 21 will be held at the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Brussels from Monday December 8, to Tuesday December 9, 2008. Its sessions start in the morning of December 9. Traditionally the participants are invited to an Evening Reception on December 8 at the conference hotel. In an informal atmosphere the attendees will have the opportunity to network and to share information.

Topics of this years’ event are

• Research strategy for Photonics Europe - the platform reviews 2008 activities and decides on action items for 2009
• 2009 FP7 calls in Photonics - work groups discuss key strategic projects and project consortia
• Coordination of national funding in Europe - political mirror group provides information on ongoing and planned activities
• Skills shortage - an European action plan will be determined to overcome the lack of qualified workforce for Photonics industry

Parallel to the Photonics21 Annual Meeting Work Group sessions the European Commission will organise the 2nd European Photonics Clusters Meeting.

For further information please contact John Magan under INFSO-PHOTONICS@ec.europa.eu.  

Meeting Registration

The Registration fee has been set at 130 Euro (incl. 21% VAT) covering entrance to all sessions, lunch, coffee breaks and Evening Reception.

As the Annual Meetings were fully booked in the past, we kindly recommend registering at your earliest convenience. Registration will be processed on a ‘first come - first serve’ basis.

Venue

Hotels in BRUSSELS - Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Brussels

The Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Brussels will again serve as the conference host site. The Photonics21 secretariat has reserved a limited block of rooms for conference attendees. The rooms are available at the special rate of 229 Euro (incl. breakfast buffet). To take advantage of the conference rate, rooms should be booked by November 3, 2008.

 

Radisson SAS

Royal Hotel Brussels *****

Wolvengracht 47

Rue du Fossé aux Loups

B-1000 Brussels

Web: royal.brussels.radissonsas.com

Virtual Tour: www.photowebusa.com/sasroyalbrussels

Transportation and Parking

If you travel by plane and you want to use Public Transport, you have to take the train which goes to Bruxelles "Central station" (Gare Centrale; 2,60 Euro). It takes only 20 minutes to reach the hotel. Trains depart every 15 minutes day time. From there it is 5 minutes walking distance to the hotel.

Going to the hotel by taxi is about 35 Euro depending the time.

The hotel has underground parking with 60 parking places (30 Euro/day, 5 Euro/hour). Spaces are allocated on a first come first served basis.

To foster trans-national industry-industry and industry-science cooperation Photonics21 mirror group discussed to set up an ERA-NET Plus program.

The ERA-NET Plus allows the Member States and the EC to set up a common fund of money which can be used to support trans-national research on a chosen topic of strategic importance. Member States which are interested in participating in this action contribute 2/3rd of the funding and the remaining 1/3rd comes from the Commission.

This fund is used to finance trans-national research projects which are selected from a single call. The Mirror Group has reached an agreement that the topic of this ERA-NET Plus will be 'next generation broadband access'. The likely total size of this action will be about 30M€ funding, 20M€ coming from participating Member States and 10M€ from the Commission.

The next steps for the Mirror Group are to work out the details of the call, agree on procedures and to start the process of allocating budget from the national programmes. Photonics21work group 1 provided the research priority on next generation broadband access and was closely involved in the set up of the call text.

The call for projects is expected to be launched in January 2010.

Photonics21 President Martin Goetzeler (CEO Osram) met EU Commissioner Viviane Reding in Brussels last week. The aim of the meeting was to provide update information on Photonics21 activities and discuss how Photonics can be supportive in reaching the goal of 20% energy saving by 2020.

Martin Goetzeler informed Viviane Reding, who actively supported the initiation of Photonics in 2005, about the ongoing activities, achievements and future developments of Photonics21. Mrs. Reding was especially impressed by the high number of more than 950 members Photonics21 has today and the new Photonics21 initiative to improve photonics education in Europe. Mrs. Reding pointed out that the Erasmus mundus programme in Photonics would be a good link when comes coordination of Photonics curricula in Europe.   

Furthermore it was discussed how Photonics could support a switch to new energy saving lighting solutions. The deployment of LED lights combined with intelligent light control could save up to 50 to 75 % energy.

On 12 March 2008, alongside the PHOTONIKA 2008 exhibition in Moscow, Photonics21, the EOS and their Russian Branch, the Laser Association, organized a match-making event with 60 European and Russian photonics experts with the aim to identify partners for FP7 photonics projects. Outcome: 10 possible joint projects.

Russia has outstanding and world-leading researchers in the area of Photonics and modern optics - three Nobel Prize Winners in this field are solid evidence and a good enough reason for the Photonics Unit of the European Commission to foster the integration of Russian photonics experts in FP7 research projects. As a first step, in order to evaluate common research interests of Eastern and Western European partners, the EC Photonics Unit proposed this match-making event and the Laser Association actively supported this idea.

 

From 7 to 11 April 2008, European leaders in the field of photonics met during the European Photonics at the “Palais de la Musique et des Congrès” in Strasbourg, France, organized by SPIE Europe.

Malgorzata Kujawinska, Warsaw University of Technology, presented Photonics21 and its defined research priorities for the Work Program 2009/2010 of the European Commission.

During the opening session, Ronan Burgess from the European Commission presented the Challenges and Opportunities for European Photonics.

The new study issued by the Photonics21 technology platform together with the European Commission and entitled "Photonics in Europe" predicts a bright future for the industry.

Having climbed to €49 billion, sales revenues in the optical technology sector have already caught up with those of the microelectronic industry and will move ahead of them in the coming years. Photonics21's 900 members from European companies, organisations and research institutes were discussing the new figures at their annual meeting in Brussels. The declared aim of the initiative is to increase the European share of the international photonics market, at present 19 percent, still further. In 2005, photonic products achieved sales of €228 billion worldwide. Based on an annual growth rate of 7.6 percent, the forecast for 2015 is for an international volume of some €439 billion. At present the industry has 246,000 employees on its payrolls in Europe – in sectors ranging from medical engineering to laser-based manufacturing.

Here, too, the growth figures are impressive. The enterprises interviewed in the study stated that they spend an average of 9.7 percent of sales revenues on research and development. The EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, is full of praise for the work of the initiative: "Over the past couple of years, Photonics21 has moved the industry into the fast lane. Europe-wide collaboration in the fields of strategy, research and development has proven to be extremely fruitful. Photonics is a key technology and will have a pivotal role to play in terms of job creation, prosperity and quality of life throughout the European Union."

Further support for Photonics21 is forthcoming from Rudolf Strohmeier, the EU Commissioner's Head of Cabinet. He is convinced that light will be the key tool in the future: "Fast, accurate and

contact-free, these attributes of photonic products are ushering in the 'century of the photon'."

The study is available for download.