WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 30, 2024 — SPIE held its third Photonics Industry Summit in Washington, D.C. last week, convening photonics industry leaders with policymakers and officials from government agencies. The event offered a window into the U.S. government’s priorities related to technology development, trade, and funding, and featured progress reports on government programs and initiatives.
Creating opportunities for technology innovation and business development were at the forefront of many presentations. From attendees, discussions focused on the need to increase the ease at which such opportunities can be seized, and offered ideas around collaboration.
Tayyab Suratwala, program director for optics and materials science & technology at the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, discusses optical technology needs for fusion ignition at the 2024 SPIE Photonics Industry Summit in Washington, D.C. Courtesy of Photonics Media.
Presentations from government representatives, including Farooq Mitha, director of the Department of Defense (DOD) Office of Small Business Programs, acknowledged many of the present challenges facing businesses that develop and use photonics technologies. Increasing the speed at which proposals are approved, contracts are issued, and funding is awarded for research and business pursuits — and for small and medium enterprises in particular — has direct ties to bolstering the national security interest.
“I was previously a small business owner, and I realized then how confusing it can be for small business owners to know where to go find opportunities, and we’ve done a lot of working on making that easier,” Mitha said.
Mitha and other presenters keyed in on integrated photonics, materials, and applications in data centers and computing. Opportunities for small businesses as well as for members of the research community to develop and use technologies in these areas were abundant in presentations from the Defense Innovation Unit, the Economic Development Administration, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), and DOD.
“There are many ways to measure impact, financial is just one,” said Olga Blum Spahn, ARPA-E program director. According to Spahn, ARPA-E tends to foster technologies that it sees as having significant potential but are perhaps too risky in their present stages of development for investors. The organization is targeting integrated photonics technologies for datacenters with specific benchmarks including a greater than 2X improvement in transactions per joule network efficiency, with a <1 petajoule per bit link budget, and a >10 terabyte per second per centimeter I/O density. And ultrawide bandgap materials, Spahn said, present a potential solution as they enable smaller devices with higher power performance, faster switching, and fewer devices per module for equivalent performance.
Additional presentations focused on identifying value for investment. Kushal Seetharam, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard and senior advisor for the Emerging Technology, U.S. Defense Innovation Unit, said that dual-use cases, in which a commercial need is present as well as a need in the defense space, are particularly attractive investment targets for government agencies.
Presentations also touted achievements and progress, including the recent establishment of 31 technology hubs by the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Cristina Killingsworth, deputy assistant secretary for policy and external affairs pointed out that the tech hubs program, created through the Chips and Science Act, has a budget of $10 billion and has so far issued $541 million to 12 of these hubs, representing approximately 5% of the program’s overall budget. The program has earmarked $4 billion for distribution during the next fiscal year, which will be used to target market gaps. According to Killingsworth, there is a 10-year timeline for the program and infrastructure in place to acquire further resources.
Mario Perez, chief technologist for NASA’s Astrophysics Division and lead for the Strategic Astrophysics Technology Program, the Roman Technology Fellowship, the Internal Scientist Funding Model, the Small Business Innovation Research division lead, and the Swift Program Scientist, presents at the 2024 SPIE Photonics Industry Summit. Courtesy of Photonics Media.
Further investment is contingent upon the success of the established consortia. In order to maintain the momentum of innovation fostered by the program funding, the EDA plans to determine metrics for results to present to stakeholders.
Mark Spencer of the Joint Directed Energy Transition Office (JDETO) overviewed recent progress in the directed energy sector. Spencer noted recent demonstrations of field utility, particularly for countering drones, and said that JDETO is currently working to advance the technology to be able to counter cruise missiles.
Elsewhere in the directed energy space, updates to the the High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI) focused on Lockheed Martin and nLight Defense working toward the development of a 500 kW and 1 mW laser, respectively. These efforts come amid multiple successful demonstrations to-date of 300-kW class lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the White Sands Missile Range. And in a session looking at recent technology progress at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), Tayyab Suratwala, program director for optics and materials science & technology at the NIF and Photon Science Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), identified laser damage as one the most active areas of current investigation. Metasurfaces are one area of focus to remedy this issue, and have proven to be fairly durable, Suratwala said.
The Summit also provided a forum for NASA to report on its progress on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and offer a look ahead to the Habitable Worlds Observatory. NASA's Astrophysics Chief Technologist Mario Perez took the stage to discuss NASA’s missions and progress in these and other areas.
SPIE has held the Photonics Industry Summit each September since 2022. The one-day forum provides an opportunity to learn about areas of investment and technological priority from U.S. government agencies and congressional speakers.