SPIE Funding Backs UK Optics and Photonics Education Initiatives

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, will provide support through its Endowment Matching Program to two initiatives at universities in the U.K. The program has provided $500,000 to the University of Glasgow to support a dedicated facility for quantum research and development projects. With the University of Birmingham, SPIE will also establish the SPIE Optics and Photonics Champion Academy Fund. To that end, SPIE has delivered a $400,000 gift, also from its SPIE Endowment Matching Program.

Both amounts have been matched by the partnering university to create funds of $1 million and $800,000, respectively.

Centre for Quantum Technology

The Glasgow-based Centre for Quantum Technology aims to build on the university’s expertise and experience as one of the largest quantum centers in the U.K., finding economic and societal benefits for the country as well as consolidating its research and teaching base, the University of Glasgow said in a press release.

The launch of the center is the latest development for quantum research at the university. It already leads QuantIC, and the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Imaging, which was launched in 2014 as part of the £1 billion ($1.35 billion) UK National Quantum Technologies Programme. Glasgow researchers work with more than 50 industrial partners. The university’s James Watt Nanofabrication Centre and its commercial arm, Kelvin Nanotechnology Ltd., have helped create many components that underpin quantum technologies in computing, imaging, communications, and sensors.

The university said it is also opening applications for a million-dollar scholarship fund for graduate student recruitment, supported with funding from SPIE. The SPIE Early Career Researcher Accelerator Fund in Quantum Photonics supports two schemes at the university: an annual SPIE Early Career Researcher in Quantum Photonics Scholarship, and the SPIE Global Early Career Research program. Each year, the program will pair several university early-career researchers with counterparts from outside laboratories for six-month shared projects.

Professor Miles Padgett serves as the center’s director.

SPIE Optics and Photonics Champion Academy

The cohort-focused program at the University of Birmingham aims to engage in areas of public interest in quantum technology and biomedical imaging and data sciences. The academy will expand students’ cross-disciplinary educational opportunities in optics and photonics; offer hands-on support and training to become influential science communicators and advocates of optics and photonics; and use stipends, awards, and activity grants that will be supplemented with professional development and mentoring opportunities from the university’s academic leaders and from external experts.

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and the University of Birmingham announced the establishment of the SPIE Optics and Photonics Champion Academy Fund. The endowment was announced at SPIE Photonex + Vacuum Technologies in Glasgow, Scotland. The academy program will support a range of degree-seeking students at the university, as well as early career researchers. Courtesy of SPIE.

The program will focus particularly on students in underrepresented groups, early-career researchers, and Ph.D. students. It will be run by Kai Bongs, professor and principal investigator of the UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing, and Iain Styles, professor of computational life sciences.