FOCUS BUSINESS NEWS
News from EPIC By Carlos Lee, director general, EPIC
EPIC reaches out to the European Parliament O
n 6 February, EPIC was invited to Strasbourg to make a presentation
at the European Parliament STOA committee (Science and Technology Options Assessment). The event was triggered by O. Grasso from the European Parliament, who attended the EPIC 10th anniversary celebration event and was convinced of the benefit to spread the word about photonics. This was a not-to-be- missed opportunity to reach out to politicians to inform them and to get them as excited as I am about our industry. I called my presentation ‘Back to the Future’. If we were back 40 years ago when the semiconductor industry started, knowing the importance of the ICT sector today, wouldn’t Europe have invested more in the electronics sector? I said the opportunity is knocking on the door again and Europe is very well positioned all along the photonics value chain. Does Europe as a continent
21 October 1983, the General Conference of Weights and Measures adopted the value of 299,792.458 km/s for the ‘official’ speed of light. After my presentation, Vittorio
Carlos Lee at the European Parliament STOA committee
want to lead in photonics? Will we remain in leadership as we transition from smaller to larger production volumes? We know that photonics is, and will remain, a pervasive and enabling technology. My presentation consisted mainly of pictures covering the wide spectrum of applications of photonics. I also presented some of the statistics extracted from the EPIC Ecosystem Report: 5,000 companies in Europe in photonics; mainly small, but growing fast. Most companies manufacture in Europe, source in
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Europe, but export the majority of their production. This is an ideal scenario for public authorities. Next year has been designated the ‘International Year of Light’. I think that complementing that with an annual ‘Day of Photonics’ may indeed be a good idea – a proposal that was suggested by Ms Grasso, who was happy to see EPIC picking-up her idea. EPIC supports the proposal made by a follower on LinkedIn: 21 October is a date that would fit, since it is not linked to any country and would encompass all photonics technologies. Furthermore, on
Prodi, a member of the European Parliament, came to thank me for my contribution and I had positive feedback from other members of the STOA committee. Also Campo Ruiz, science officer to the CEO of the European Science Foundation congratulated me. It was encouraging and heart-warming!
EPIC Events
Optical interconnect in data centres 18-19 March; Berlin, Germany
High resolution imaging for security and defence
10 June; Rome, Italy
Electronics-photonics integration and packaging
18-19 June; ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
Intra-operative assessment of tumour- resection margins 2-3 July; Rotterdam, The Netherlands
www.epic-assoc.com/events
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