The Interreg OIP4NWE consortium is organizing a series of webinars in which industry leaders provide insights on the opportunities and technological requirements that Photonic Integrated Chips (PICs) bring to their sector. Each webinar will also include an introduction to the voucher call to ensure your organization can benefit from this initiative and allow time for discussion with the speakers. 
 
An additional webinar on the 27th of February will focus on the technological specifications of the OIP4NWE pilot line as well as on the voucher call and how you can benefit from these. In this virtual meeting, all project partners will be available to answer your specific questions.
 
Additional webinars on “infrastructure & mobility” and “food & agriculture” will follow shortly.

About OIP4NWE

The Interreg north-western Europe project ‘OIP4NWE’ is a European initiative to accelerate the adoption of PIC technology by European SMEs. By reducing the access barriers to this technology, OIP4NWE aims to strengthen the competitiveness and innovativeness of European SMEs on the global market. Therefore, OIP4NWE is establishing an open innovation pilot line for the development of photonic integration technology. Vouchers are made available to stimulate the involvement of SMEs.

What is integrated photonics?

Integrated photonics is the emerging technology where the manipulation of light takes place on a microchip, making the components cheaper, smaller and more energy-efficient compared to today’s solutions or conventional microchips. In parallel, the integration of multiple photonic functions onto a single chip offer improved thermal stability, vibration stability and reliability and make the device immune to electromagnetic and radio frequency interreference. The applications range from data & telecom, mobility & infrastructure, medical & bio-sensing to agriculture and food security.  

Programme

Date: 27/01/2021 at 10:00 – 11:00
Topic: Optical solutions for radio access networks: where could integrated photonics help?

Speaker: Antonio Tartaglia – Ericsson                                                                                       

Description:
The talk will cover state of the art and future challenges in optical transmission solutions for Radio Access Networks, touching on similarities and differences with solutions for data centres and indicating the areas in which integrated photonics could come to the rescue.”   
 
Date: 03/02/2021 at 10:00 – 11:00
Topic: PICs for Medical Devices and in Life Science applications

Speaker 1: Cees Ronda - Philips                                                                                                  

Description:
In the medical devices field, there is a severe cost pressure as a result of ageing populations. Older people generally need more care and with people getting older on average, the need for care increases. This is an important driver in this market. Another driver is a desire to reduce the impact of deadliest diseases.

Speaker 2: Wolfgang Drexler – Medical University of Vienna, Austria

Description:
In the last three decades optical coherence tomography (OCT) has established itself as a unique non-invasive, optical medical diagnostic imaging modality, enabling unprecedented in vivo cross-sectional tomographic visualization of internal microstructure in a variety of biological systems. Ophthalmology has been the most successful and commercially most active medical field for OCT so far, but several other OCT applications, e.g. in cardiology, dentistry, gastroenterology or dermatology, are on the verge of expanding their market comparable to or larger than that of ophthalmology.Recently OCT has also been based on photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology to not only reduce footprint, but also to enable miniaturized, maintenance free operation in a variety of new applications.
 
Date:10/02/2021 at 10:00 – 12:00
Topic: Introduction OIP4NWE Pilot line + voucher call
Agenda:

• Introduction - Victor Dolores Calzadilla, Eindhoven University of Technology
• PIC Pilot line, Part I - SMART Photonics
• PIC Pilot line, Part II - Prof. Jürgen van Erps, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• PIC Pilot line, Part III - Donal Behal, Tyndall National Institute
• Voucher scheme and introduction of the call - Prof. Jürgen van Erps, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Discussion