Escalating efforts to meet workforce demands

JAKE SALTZMAN, EDITOR JAKE.SALTZMAN@PHOTONICS.COM

Regional clusters are a hallmark of the North American photonics landscape. The cluster model, by its nature, enables individual regions to spearhead scientific progress in the technology areas that drive economic opportunity.

On a larger scale, this model ensures that the photonics ecosystem on this continent retains influence from each of the individual regions that compose it. Think Rochester, N.Y., and optics, or Arizona’s “Optics Valley” and astronomy. The optics hotbed of Central Florida, which serves as the backdrop of this issue’s cover story, is synonymous with optical technologies used in the aerospace and defense sector. The Colorado Photonics Industry Association and Montana Photonics Industry Alliance, fostering advancements in quantum and semiconductor technologies, respectively, have also featured in this magazine in recent issues.

The beauty of the cluster model, and indeed much of its value, extends beyond individualism. Clusters work in harmony to drive progress in support of a shared industry. They do not exist in a vacuum.

A parent industry is not the only thing that clusters share. Workforce needs run through the entire industry. And not only in North America.

The featured stories in this issue delve into distinct elements of workforce development and related initiatives. The necessary training, credentialing, and upscaling of viable talent advances critical knowledge far beyond any singular technology area or region. This critical knowledge also reaches beyond any one segment of the population.

The approaches that industry changemakers in Central Florida have adopted (and which contributing editor James Schlett explores in his feature article here) are just some of the current undertakings targeting the workforce. The Netherlands-based photonic chip accelerator PhotonDelta, in announcing its plans last month to open a U.S. office, cited the need to bolster the workforce in Europe, and the U.S. PhotonDelta said its forthcoming efforts may include university exchange programs.

The plans of PhotonDelta, of course, point to another challenge in workforce development: cultivating a workforce for emergent technologies, such as those that factor into integrated photonics and semiconductor technologies.

One approach, perhaps under-considered, involves taking steps to familiarize students with relevant technologies before the students reach high school. As he writes in this issue, it is a thought that Kevin McComber, cofounder and executive director of the Spark Photonics Foundation, has himself turned into action.

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