ANALYSIS: SKILLS SHORTAGE


Analysis and opinion section sponsored by


Highlighting career options key to increasing photonics talent pool


Lydia Sanmartí-Vila, Silvia Tognetti, Federica Beduini and Silvia Carrasco, from the Carla project, highlight how career events can increase female talent and diversity in photonics, helping to fill the skills gap


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hotonics is a fascinating field, and one of the aspects that makes it so special is its multidisciplinary applications. This technology sector has become essential in areas such as healthcare, green energy, cybersecurity and communication, agrophotonics, mobility, smart cities, environment and across all areas of industry. The global market is estimated to be worth an astounding €650bn (Mordor Intelligence). As with other deep- tech fields, a highly-educated, skilled workforce is essential to leverage this phenomenal opportunity.


The photonics workforce needs


to grow to sustain the needs of the underlying industry and ecosystem, and to amplify its potential even further. The big challenge is to obtain enough skilled graduates or trained personnel, which requires the participation of more talent, especially female and other under-represented minorities. Photonics requires know-how in physics but also in mathematics, engineering, biology, chemistry, nanotechnology, medicine and many more STEM areas that are essential to the development of knowledge and technologies that can impact society. The question is, how do we


attract more diverse people to a field that competes for talent in all STEM fields? Are STEM students, even early-career researchers, aware of the opportunities that photonics poses to them? Last year a new EU-funded Horizon 2020 project was launched with the aim of creating an open source tool to promote


4 Electro Optics April 2021


photonics careers. The project, The European Photonics Career Launch Path (Carla) – an initiative of the European Centres for Outreach in Photonics – is co-ordinated by the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona and is composed of a consortium of 11 partners from 10 countries. It has designed a model for career development events, known as Carla camps, involving input from more than 80 representatives from different stakeholder groups. These career camps aim to highlight the broad range of career opportunities that exist in photonics to STEM undergraduates, master students and PhD students and early- stage postdocs. The stakeholder groups involved included


members of the photonics industry and academia, entrepreneurs, as well as STEM university students and early- stage researchers. To ensure that diversity and inclusion permeated the events, diversity experts were involved in their design. The first of the Carla camps,


organised by ICFO, took place virtually in February. The agenda reflected the primary purpose of these events, to inspire and inform university students and early-stage researchers about career opportunities in photonics – in industry and academia – as well as encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. The event had to bring


together a multidisciplinary community to highlight the diverse range of careers in photonics, and to build additional bridges between the photonics ecosystem and the future workforce. More than 150 people attended the event, which consisted of three well- defined blocks. The first was


dedicated to introducing the photonics landscape and some of the large initiatives underlying this ecosystem in the EU, as well as tools and approaches to career development provided by professional recruiters and trainers.


The second block centered


on the photonics community at large, featuring presentations from 10 professionals from varying sectors across industry


“For the photonics workforce to grow according to the needs of the ecosystem, we need to make it visible to all of the potential workforce”


and academia, including related areas such as publishing and communications, investment and intellectual property. The third block was devoted to innovation and entrepreneurship and included a hands-on workshop in which participants worked in small but diverse groups. Attendees had the opportunity to


A Carla poster highlights the range of careers photonics offers @electrooptics | www.electrooptics.com


Carla Camp/IFCO


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