Sources at IBM say that product development kits based on the company’s work developing silicon photonics engines for high-speed data center and server connectivity are nearing the alpha stage and should reach full technology qualification next year. The company is now willing to engage potential partners interested in turning the technology into products. Speaking at...Continue Reading

SPIE’s Photonics West, arguably the largest photonics conference in the world at 21,000 attendees this year, had representation among its exhibitors of  roughly 18% of the world’s optic and photonics market. That market, estimated at roughly $480 Billion by SPIE, is the foundation for technological advances in manufacturing, metrology, nanotechnology, semiconductors, biomedical instruments, consumer electronics,...Continue Reading

The pervasive and powerfully leveraging field of photonics has rich potential to help solve the world’s major challenges, Eugene Arthurs, CEO of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, told audiences in Taiwan last week. But, he said, the community needs to raise awareness of the field if that potential is to be realized...Continue Reading

“Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca and Binghamton get to share the old car” Hey, that’s not my analogy, it’s Governor Cuomo’s.  In announcing the investments in Buffalo this morning, Governor Cuomo said that the state investing $1B in Buffalo was like having five children, and on Christmas morning, handing a set of keys to one of them...Continue Reading

From Tom Battley, Executive Director of New York Photonics Excerpted from the October 22nd edition of The Hill I am writing in response to Rep. Louise Slaughter’s  Oct. 10 op-ed, “Advancing American competitiveness by harnessing the power of light.” In New York, home of the imaging “Capital of the World,” researchers, engineers and technicians are...Continue Reading

Last week Rochester once again demonstrated its importance in the optics and photonics global economy by hosting the SPIE Optifab meeting — North America’s largest exhibition of optical manufacturing and testing equipment and technology. Sponsored by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and co-sponsored by the APOMA (American Precision Optics Manufacturers Association), the...Continue Reading

On Thursday, September 19th, RRPC representatives Tom Battley, John Bruning, Chris Cotton, Jay Eastman and Rick Plympton joined some fifty representatives from around the country in an “NPI Education Day” for members of the House and Senate in Washington D.C. The event was organized by OSA and SPIE in order to inform and educate representatives...Continue Reading

Even during a government hostage crisis, Representative Louise Slaughter, New York’s 25th, gets it about the National Photonics Initiative Kodak. Xerox. Bausch & Lomb. Over the course of the 20th century, these “big three” companies have made America — and more specifically Rochester, N.Y. — the optics, photonics, imaging and display (OPID) capital of the...Continue Reading

240 stakeholders converged at the Rochester Museum and Science Center’s Riedman Gallery on September 10 to interact with industry experts and thought leaders in a conversation about the National Photonics Initiative. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, representative 25th district, New York cohosted the meeting. Slaughter’s opening remarks emphasized Rochester’s leading role in optics, photonics and imaging for...Continue Reading

Photonics was the focal point at the University of Central Florida (UCF) on Wednesday when Rep. John L. Mica paid a visit to the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL). “They are performing phenomenal research in our backyard,” Mica said. “The work going on at UCF holds tremendous potential for our...Continue Reading