“Photonics provides a competitive edge for every industry,” Commissioner Oettinger said. "5G, Robotics and factories of the future all depend on photonics and working in a strategic partnership."
Taking place at the Le Plaza Hotel, in Brussels, the meeting gathered more than 370 photonics experts from industry, research organisations and politics to set out the agenda for the future of its Horizon 2020 work programme.
Photonics21 president and CEO of Jenoptik, Michael Mertin, highlighted the good work taking place in Europe through photonics. He focused on the importance of photonics in a world context, calling to ensure Europe stays at the centre of the global photonics market through its critical input into the digitisation of industry.
Mertin said: "The most promising field for photonics as a key enabling technology lies within the megatrend of digitisation, which will certainly have a tremendous impact on factors that shape a nation's future economic and competitive edge. What I am convinced of is that the rising tide of digitisation will induce fundamental changes to classic global economic structures and business models as well as to our private lives"
The joint winners of the Photonics21 Student Innovation Award 2016 were also announced by Photonics21 executive board member, Roberta Ramponi.
Benedikt Schwarz of the Institute for Solid State Electronics and Centre for Micro- and Nanostructures, TU Wien collected one of the prizes for his work on miniaturised mid-infrared sensors.
Fernando Guiomar of the Dipartimento di Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni, Politecnico di Torino, took the other prize for his work on high performance and efficient digital signal processing algorithms for the compensation of nonlinear propagation impairments in high-speed and long-haul optical fibre systems. Both were praised for their excellent photonics research and were awarded with €2500.
