SPIE and University of Glasgow announce $1 M quantum photonics program

28 Jul 2020

The SPIE Early Career Researcher Accelerator Fund in Quantum Photonics will support collaborative early-career research.

Faccio, center, working on laser system alignment and optimization with students.

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and the University of Glasgow, UK, have announced the establishment of the SPIE Early Career Researcher Accelerator Fund in Quantum Photonics.

The $500,000 gift from the SPIE Endowment Matching Program will be matched 100% by the university. The program will support a diverse group of graduate students working in the field of quantum photonics and will be managed by Professor Daniele Faccio, Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, and Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy Professor Miles Padgett.

The fund will create two new programs at the university: an annual SPIE Early Career Researcher in Quantum Photonics Scholarship will be awarded to an outstanding Glasgow graduate student who is in the process of completing their studies.

In addition, the SPIE Global Early Career Research program will support outgoing and incoming placements at and from the university as part of its ongoing collaboration with leading quantum-photonics research groups across the globe. Each year, the program will pair several University early-career researchers with counterparts from outside laboratories for six-month-long shared projects.

'Transformative opportunities'

“We are delighted to be participating in these exciting endeavors with the University of Glasgow,” said SPIE President John Greivenkamp. “The interactive placements will offer transformative opportunities the university’s academic and industry-based researchers, and, together with the annual scholarship, will develop well-prepared, knowledgeable early-career researchers who will drive the future of the quantum industry.”

“We’re pleased and proud to be establishing the Early Career Researcher Accelerator Fund in Quantum Photonics thanks to SPIE’s generous gift, which we’re very happy to match with our own funding,” said Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow,

“The University’s quantum photonics expertise is world-leading, and our researchers have found ways to see through walls, capture images at a trillion frames per second, and take the very first pictures of quantum entanglement in action. This additional funding will help the University train a new generation of graduate students to make valuable contributions to academia and industry and inspire them to make their own amazing research breakthroughs,” he added.

The SPIE Endowment Matching Program, established in 2019, is a $2.5 million, five-year, educational-funding initiative designed to increase international capacity in the teaching and research of optics and photonics. SPIE supports optics and photonics education and the future of the industry by contributing a match of up to $500,000 per award to college and university programs with optics and photonics degrees, or with other disciplines allied to the SPIE mission.

The initial SPIE contribution to the University of Arizona named a new endowed faculty chair, the SPIE Chair in Optical Sciences. Four more agreements announced earlier this year established the SPIE-Glebov Family Optics and Photonics Graduate Scholarship Fund and the Soileau Family-SPIE Optics and Photonics Undergraduate Scholarship Fund, both at the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics, the Baur-SPIE Endowed Chair in Optics and Photonics at JILA, and the SPIE@ICFO Chair for Diversity in Photonic Sciences.

About the Author

Daneet Steffens is Public Relations Manager, SPIE.