Like last year, the PIC International conference will take place in Brussels, Belgium, this time from 6-7th March at the Sheraton Airport hotel. The program includes technology and market talks from industry leading experts in the field of photonic integration, and it’s a great place to network and get updated on the latest trends.
Additionally this year, to recognize and highlight key industry achievements in advancing photonic integration through platform development, manufacturing, design, packaging and device characterization, the organizers have recently announced its PIC Awards programme.

With voting taking place online and presentations made at the PIC International 2017 networking dinner on the evening of March 7th in Brussels, the awards put the spotlight on innovation.

Nominations were open to all companies, individuals and organisations within the PIC community, and after the nomination period, VLC Photonics was selected for the “Design ad Packaging” category, so we kindly ask you to check also the other nominees and give us your support! VOTE HERE

Next week, one of the largest optics and photonics exhibitions of the world is once again taking place in San Francisco. From Jan 28th to Feb 2nd, SPIE Photonics West will be organized at the Moscone center. Besides the exhibition itself, this event comprises of conferences and courses covering many topics in the field.

VLC Photonics CEO Iñigo Artundo and Bernardo Gargallo will be exhibiting at booth number 4468 on the North Hall. Pass by to learn about latest designs, available foundries and MPW runs, or packaging providers. If you want to arrange a meeting there with them, just write an email to inigo.artundo(at)vlcphotonics.com?subject=Meeting%20at%20Photonics%20West

Some photonic integration related sessions and activities not to be missed are:

• Integrated Optics: Devices, Materials, and Technologies XXI (Conference 10106)
• Smart Photonic and Optoelectronic Integrated Circuits XIX (Conference 10107)
• Silicon Photonics XII (Conference 10108)
• Optical Interconnects XVII (Conference 10109)
• Photonic Instrumentation Engineering IV (Conference 10110)
• Terahertz, RF, Millimeter, and Submillimeter-Wave Technology and Applications X (Conference 10103)
• Course: Photonic Integration
• Industry event: Silicon Photonics and Photonic Integrated Circuits: An Industry Perspective

Quantum technologies are revolutionizing many applications, like security, sensing, metrology or computing. Photonic integration can be applied to quantum optic systems to improve their performance and reliability, while lowering their cost and size, and scaling up their complexity.

VLC Photonics has been actively contributing to this field for many years. Recent research activities of VLC Photonics founders David Domenech, Pascual Muñoz and José Capmany were focused on the photonic integration of random number generators. Their findings, together with other researchers from ICFO and CNR, are summarized in an article recently published in the third volume of scientific journal Optica:

Carlos Abellan, Waldimar Amaya, David Domenech, Pascual Muñoz, Jose Capmany, Stefano Longhi, Morgan W. Mitchell, and Valerio Pruneri, “Quantum entropy source on an InP photonic integrated circuit for random number generation,” Optica 3, 989-994 (2016) 

If you are intersted in learning about this emerging field, there will be soon a Presidency event on Quantum Technologies, on the 16-17th Feb in Malta, were Iñigo Artundo from VLC will participate in a round table and also on the QuantERA proposers event.

Additionally, VLC Photonics contributions in quantum optics were acknowledged by the European Commission, when its CEO Iñigo Artundo was selected to be one of the members of the Expert Group on Quantum Optics Flagship, a High Level Steering Committee focused on transparent cooperation together with academic and industrial stakeholders and Member states to help defining the upcoming program (link).

The European Photonics Industry Consortium is organizing a meeting on Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) testing, on the 16^th and 17^th February 2017 in Pisa, Italy.

Primary scope of the event is to discuss and list requirements, differentiating also where, how, and what has to be tested in the whole PICs manufacturing chain. At wafer level another important differentiation is given by the coupling methods.

Like packaging, testing starts at design level and ends with automated test machines. The discussion will range from probing techniques to handling and test procedures and also touch briefly on the needs and requirements for dedicated modular instrumentation.

Our characterization engineer Rocio Baños will be attending the event, and giving a presentation on “Challenges for PIC characterization” on Friday 17th at 12:20. You can check the progam and register in the following link: EPIC meeting on PIC testing 2017.

VLC Photonics has the support of the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (IVACE) for the development of its 2016 Internationalization Plan. Project co-financed with FEDER funds. Ref. nº DOCV 7910, 04/11/2016. These funds will help to expand VLC Photonics activities across the globe

Asia Communications and Photonics Conference (ACP) is currently the largest conference in Asia-Pacific region on optical communications, photonics, optical sensing and relevant optoelectronic technologies. ACP has been held annually tracing back to 2001, and it is jointly sponsored by The Optical Society (OSA), the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), IEEE Photonics Society (IPS), The Chinese Optical Society (COS) and China Institute of Communications (CIC).

ACP 2016 together with the 9th International Photonics and OptoElectronics Meetings (POEM 2016), the 13th International Conference on Photonics and Imaging in Biology and Medicine (PIBM 2016), will be held in Shangri-La Hotel, Wuhan, on November 2-5, 2016.

VLC Photonics will be exhibiting at the conference, on booth #17, and Jose Capmany, one of VLC’s founders, will be giving an invited talk at the ACP/POEM Joint Track 5: Optical Signal Processing and Microwave Photonics. Registration for this event is still open, for more information click on following link.