Industrial engagement

Exhibitions

Our 2018 industrial engagement strategy elected to prioritise expanding the Hub’s national reach, consolidating our central role within the UK photonics community and further targeting UK manufacturing industries which stand to benefit from photonics-enabled solutions.

To increase and sustain our interactions with these key stakeholders, the Hub showcased its technologies at six national exhibitions and industry showcases, two in each quarter of the year. These included the KTN’s Emerging Technologies Showcase (London), Farnborough Airshow and Innovation South (both Farnborough), Photonex photonics trade show (Coventry), and the Materials Research Exchange (London) and Advanced Engineering Show (Birmingham) which were both especially successful in enabling us to reach brand new audiences in the automotive, aerospace, and security sectors.

At each event, Hub researchers and members of our business development team were on hand to discuss prospective collaborations with exhibition visitors and to provide live demonstrations of new technologies such as multispectral imaging using novel glasses and a new optical fibre-based vibration sensing system. Hardware demonstrators proved particularly strong catalysts for industrial lead generation and we are currently working to add new examples to our portfolio for 2019.

The forthcoming year will see the Hub deepen its connections with prospective collaborators by targeting selected international exhibitions within those photonics end-user industries which have responded with particular promise to our 2018 industrial engagement activities.

Hub Industry Day

The Hub’s 2018 Industry Day was the major focal point of this year’s industrial engagement calendar. Held at the University of Southampton in September, this one day conference and trade show was our largest event to date, attracting more than 200 delegates from the photonics industry and photonicsenabled sectors including defence and aerospace, data communications and storage, manufacturing, microelectronics and materials, as well as 28 exhibiting companies.

Keynote speaker Dr Benn Thomsen of Microsoft Research opened the day with a presentation on ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Photonics in the Cloud’, providing a pertinent industrial perspective leading into the first technical session, ‘Solutions for Next-Generation Data Communications’. Other sessions showcased major developments from the Hub’s key Technology Platforms - higher power, more efficient lasers, volume manufacturing of 2D and metamaterials and integrated, compact, low cost smart devices, as well as a session reviewing the UK photonics manufacturing sector, which included invited speakers Georgios Papadakis (Innovate UK) and Ben Whitaker (Defence and Security Accelerator) highlighting forthcoming funding opportunities.

The programme was designed to bring collaboration to the fore and activities such as a business brunch and speed-networking, alongside access to flexible meeting space and dedicated exhibition time, enabled attendees to establish new contacts and discuss ways of working together. Responding to the postevent survey, more than 90% of delegates reported gaining an increased knowledge of new photonics fabrication processes which they could foresee being used in future manufacturing and over 90% of exhibitors generated new leads as a result of participating. Furthermore, 100% of delegates and exhibitors said that they would attend future Hub events, a success we intend to build upon in 2019 by holding our Industry Day in Sheffield, co-located with the long-established UK Semiconductors conference.