The inaugural Scottish Conference in Optical Technologies (SCOT), in partnership with OPTICA and Technology Scotland, took place in the beautiful surroundings of the St. Andrews Old Course Hotel from 22nd – 24th April. It was organised by the 5 Scottish OPTICA Chapters (Universities of St. Andrews, Strathclyde, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, and Dundee) and attended by approximately 100 postgraduate students and representatives from across the photonics industry. The event was sponsored by a number of Technology Scotland members and partners, including Coherent, Optos, Cornerstone, Fraunhofer UK, QuantIC, UKATC, Vector Photonics, Alban Lasers Systems and Alter Technologies.
Alison McLeod (Director – Photonics Scotland) kicked off the industry sessions with an overview of the Scottish photonics sector and the many career opportunities available to the students, followed by Kirsty Annand (QuantIC) who spoke about navigating your career after your PhD. Together they introduced Opening up Photonics, a platform supporting the Scottish photonics industry to discuss, challenge and address equality, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility as a community. The first day’s presentation session culminated with a panel focussing on “EDI in Photonics and Optics” with Yann Amouroux (OPTICA), Kirsty Annand, Rodrigo Benevide (who had presented that day’s keynote) and Alison McLeod.
Day 2 of SCOT saw the students presenting their work in 2 session streams which ran in parallel, chaired by students from the organising committee, covering topics in Quantum Computing and information, Biophotonics and sensing and medical optics, Computational Imaging, Metaoptics and laser design, Structured Light, Nanophotonics, and Quantum Optics. It was great to see their work being presented and good discussions between peers being sparked.
The 3rd day of the conference was concentrating on industry with presentations given by Simon Andrews (Fraunhofer UK) and Simon Armstrong (QURECA) before industry flash talks were given by representatives of Coherent, Optos, UKATC, Cornerstone, Aquark Technologies, and Vector Photonics. A panel session on “New and Upcoming Technologies for Optics” with Simon Andrews, Simon Armstrong, Alexander Jantzen (Aquark Technologies) and Alison McLeod brought the presentation sessions to a close, before the job fair, featuring 8 of the industry sponsors, kicked off. This gave the students a great opportunity to speak to industry to find out the sort of roles available and also the skills required for them.
SCOT provided a great opportunity for early career researchers to present their work, gain knowledge of the strong Scottish photonics sector and the career opportunities held therein, build their professional network and learn valuable transferable skills which will be vital for their future careers. Technology Scotland looks forward to partnering on the 2nd meeting of SCOT in 2025.