Departments
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Week of 17 October 1997 |
Vol. I, No. 8 |
Feature
Article
The light fantastic
by Eric McHenry
At 11:45 a.m. on October 23, participants in the BU Photonics Center's inaugural symposium will enjoy what might best be described as a "light luncheon." The presenter, though, will be no lightweight.
Lord George Porter, Nobel laureate in chemistry and past president of the Royal Society of London, will speak on the subject of short pulse lasers in the evolution of materials. It will be one of the day's many highlights, according to Donald Fraser, director of the Photonics Center and organizer of "Photonics: Driving the Economy of the Future." Every speaker scheduled for the symposium, he says, is a luminary.
"Each of the speakers is a very senior person, generally the top corporate planning or technical person in one of these large corporations," he says. "And each will give a view of what's going to happen in a particular part of the industry over the next 10 years or so. The audience will get a vision of where the industry is going from the leaders of that industry."
The program's initial presenters will look at the larger economic picture, he says.
"The first speaker, Kelly Carnes, is the assistant secretary for technology in the U.S. Department of Commerce. She's going to point out the value of these high-tech industries in the context of the economy of the United States.
"Then we'll hear from Dr. Arpad Bergh, president of the Optoelectronic Industry Development Association. He'll talk more specifically about the photonics industry and what it represents in the world as a market.
"The message there," Fraser adds, "will be that it's big, and growing very rapidly."
That's because photonics, the technology of light, has applications almost everywhere, from electronic entertainment media to medicine. Presenters at the symposium will represent such corporations as Corning, Hewlett Packard, Polaroid, and Lockheed Martin and will address the importance of photonics to fiber optics, business equipment, and aerospace, among other fields. Aggregately, theirs is a $100 billion industry growing at an annual rate of 18 percent.
Because of the Photonics Center and its brand-new building, Fraser says, BU is now in a unique position to contribute to, and benefit from, that industry. He believes the symposium will help raise recognition of the center's capacities and lay the groundwork for future University partnerships with the private sector.
"The target audience is potential industry partners, and the registrations for the symposium, to date, are following that pattern," he says. "And it's probably going to sell out."
As an academic entity, the Photonics Center requires its own category. It is distinct from other BU centers, and from other academic institutions, Fraser says, because of the degree to which it interacts with corporations and investors.
"I think BU is pioneering a new way of using a university," he says. "It's one of the expressions of Jon Westling's vision, which is to get the University more fully engaged with the society around it."
Such engagement benefits the University and its private sector partners mutually, he says, and in myriad ways.
"The engines of ingenuity in this country are the universities, including this one, and the small entrepreneurial companies," says Fraser. "But it's hard for a small company to get the resources together in a complex technology like this, to get that first product working. And that's the role of the Photonics Center. We have a lot of resources here -- this building and the ability to do things in this building, with its equipment and its permits and the expertise we have -- to help a company without very much money.
"We provide space and expertise, the sorts of things we hope will create a future revenue stream for the University," he says. "But more important, we're creating an environment for the faculty and students here that is very real. What the company achieves is a means to get its products out with less investment. Our researchers, in turn, get a better idea of what's important in this industry, and our students get real-world experience."
That connection even places some students on a glide path to further engagement after graduation.
"We're only three years old," Fraser says of the center. "Even so, some students have already found future employment through their work here."
"Photonics: Driving the Economy of the Future," will be held on Thursday, Oct. 23, at the Boston University Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary's Street. For registration information, call 617-353-8899 or e-mail <photonics@photonics.bu.edu>.