News › PHOTONICS GERMANY – Alli­ance for increased rese­arch funding

PHOTONICS GERMANY- Future Sum­mit 2022: Exploi­ting untap­ped inno­va­tion poten­tial in pho­to­nics through tech­no­lo­gi­cal funding

Indus­try mee­ting high­ligh­ted the diver­sity of appli­ca­tion fields for pho­to­nics with prac­ti­cal examp­les from health­care, smart pro­duc­tion. Mobi­lity, Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion, Secu­rity and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion / New Memo­ran­dum of Under­stan­ding advo­ca­tes stron­ger inno­va­tion and com­pe­ti­ti­ve­ness of the Ger­man pho­to­nics industry.

An indus­try mee­ting with a view to the future pro­s­pects of the Ger­man pho­to­nics sec­tor. This is what the PHOTONICS GERMANY Future Sum­mit deli­vered on Octo­ber 12 at the KARL-STORZ Visi­tor Cen­ter in Ber­lin. The 80 par­ti­ci­pants were offe­red a varied pro­gram with future topics from the dif­fe­rent appli­ca­tion areas of pho­to­nics and the cur­rent eco­no­mic chal­lenges of the high-tech indus­try. With their joint alli­ance PHOTONICS GERMANY, the Ger­man indus­try asso­cia­tion SPECTARIS and Optec­Net Ger­many – Inno­va­tion Net­works Opti­cal Tech­no­lo­gies and Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies, set them­sel­ves the goal of streng­thening the posi­tion of pho­to­nics as a Ger­man high-tech indus­try at natio­nal and Euro­pean level. And the dia­lo­gue with poli­tics has alre­ady been initia­ted: »With PHOTONICS GERMANY we have gai­ned a strong new com­mu­ni­ca­tion part­ner« empha­si­zed Mario Bran­den­burg, Par­lia­men­tary State Secre­tary at the Fede­ral Minis­try of Edu­ca­tion and Rese­arch, in his intro­duc­tory video greeting.

»As a cross-sec­tional tech­no­logy with an enorm­ous leverage effect, pho­to­nics is beco­ming an enab­ling tech­no­logy for a large num­ber of other key indus­tries,« empha­si­zed Optec­Net board mem­ber Dr. Andreas Ehr­hardt. The importance of pho­to­nics in essen­tial high-tech indus­tries was reflec­ted in the diverse daily pro­gram of the Future Sum­mit: from the appli­ca­tion of opti­cal devices using the exam­ple of mini-endo­scopy in health­care, laser tech­no­logy in smart pro­duc­tion, to sen­sor tech­no­logy in the mobi­lity of tomor­row or the secu­rity indus­try. An assess­ment of the cur­rent glo­bal and Ger­man eco­no­mic situa­tion with the impact of the Corona pan­de­mic so far and tips on finan­cing oppor­tu­ni­ties for pho­to­nics start­ups roun­ded off the diverse program.

But at the same time, pres­sing glo­bal chal­lenges are emer­ging that need to be addres­sed. »Spen­ding on pho­to­nics rese­arch fun­ding in key glo­bal mar­kets such as China and the US is incre­asing rapidly. If we in Ger­many do not want to jeo­par­dize our cur­rent strong posi­tion in the glo­bal pho­to­nics mar­ket, we will need broad-based tech­no­lo­gi­cal sup­port in the future as well. The untap­ped inno­va­tion poten­tial of pho­to­nics is immense. An emer­ging focus on the light­house tech­no­logy of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies alone will the­r­e­fore not do jus­tice to the wide-ran­ging appli­ca­tion pos­si­bi­li­ties of pho­to­nics and its out­stan­ding role as an enab­ling tech­no­logy,« appea­led Dr. Bern­hard Ohnes­orge, Pho­to­nics Chair­man at SPECTARIS in his key­note address.

A spe­cial high­light on the day’s pro­gram was the pre­sen­ta­tion of a joint decla­ra­tion of intent bet­ween the Sci­en­ti­fic Society Laser Tech­no­logy and Pho­to­nics (WLT) and PHOTONICS GERMANY. The two part­ners thus con­firmed their goal of making pho­to­nics and laser tech­no­logy more visi­ble in eco­no­mic and rese­arch policy by deepe­ning their coope­ra­tion. Dr. Bern­hard Ohnes­orge drew a posi­tive con­clu­sion for the indus­try mee­ting: »With this future sum­mit, we were able to high­light the enorm­ous poten­tial and the strong mar­ket posi­tion of Ger­man pho­to­nics. To streng­then this posi­tion, our alli­ance will con­ti­nue to act as a repre­sen­ta­tive dia­log and cont­act part­ner for poli­cy­ma­kers, because inno­va­tion thri­ves on exchange.«