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Photonics summer school addresses skills shortage

17 Jun 2002

As the photonics industry faces a skills shortage, one company has come up with an innovative solution to the problem. Nadya Anscombe reports.

From Opto & Laser Europe October 2001

Denmark has seen a massive drop in the number of students choosing to study engineering at university and is, like the rest of Europe, facing a skills shortage in the photonics industry.

Rather than just sitting back and debating what to do, Danish company NKT took the matter into its own hands. In August, the firm organized an advanced photonics summer school in Copenhagen.

The school, aimed at Masters and PhD students from around the world, not only gave the students access to world-renowned lecturers, but also meant that NKT made contact with 85 potential employees. Ove Poulsen, CEO of NKT Research, told OLE: "If any of the elite students attending our summer school take a liking to Denmark and wish to build a career in our sector of research or in our industrial firms then we will have achieved our goal. We are constantly on the lookout for highly qualified people that can help take us forward."

And it is not just NKT that benefits from the school. The students attended the course for free: there was no registration fee; all of the accommodation was paid for; a travel grant was available for those who needed it; and they even got pocket money.

The students received tuition from international researchers who are renowned in their fields. For example, Eli Yablonovitch from UCLA in the US presented his vision of an optical integrated circuit based on photonic crystals; Ursula Keller from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology enthused about ultrafast photonics; Erich Ippen from MIT in the US talked about nonlinear devices; and Lin Mollenauer from Lucent Technologies in the US lectured on dispersion-managed solitons.

And if any of the students were in any doubt as to why they had chosen to study photonics, then an hour with Sune Svanberg - director of the Lund Laser Centre (LLC) in Sweden - soon cured them of any apathy. His incredibly enthusiastic lecture was part of a visit to LLC and its labs, including its terawatt-laser facility. Other visits included in the week-long summer school were to the Danish Technical University's optical-communications research centre and to NKT's spin-off firms Crystal Fibre and Ionas, both located near Copenhagen.

The summer school took place in the magnificent surroundings of the city's Academy of Sciences and Letters, where all of the students took part in lectures on five topics: photonic-bandgap components; nonlinear devices and communication; quantum communication and computing; quantum-dot lasers; and ultrafast technologies and optical communications.

Poulsen is keen to stress that NKT had no control over the choice of topics. He said: "We have a strong technical committee from academia that chose the topics and speakers. To my surprise, all of the invited speakers accepted immediately."

One of these was Richard De La Rue from Glasgow University in the UK who gave an introduction to photonic-crystal technology. He said: "The funding for this school has been better than for any other I have attended. I am surprised that NKT is prepared to fund the school to such an extent."

Hans-Jörg Lohe, a student at the Technical University in Zurich, Switzerland, said: "It was good to attend lectures on topics outside my field. I was attracted to the summer school because of the lecturers and I was not disappointed. The social aspect of the summer school was also important - I met students from all around the world."The 85 students that made it onto the course came from 26 different countries and were chosen from 250 applicants. John Østergaard, secretary of the summer school said: "The original concept for the school provided for 60 students, but we received so many qualified applications that we increased the intake to 85."

Whether any of these students end up working for NKT remains to be seen. But one thing is clear, they will have been impressed by what Denmark has to offer and will have happy memories of warm summer evenings in Copenhagen. And of course the fascinating lectures! NKT summer school www.nkt.dk/summer

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