PIXAPP industry training program provides attendees with state-of-the-art facilities and technical mentoring.

Cork, Ireland -- The PIXAPP Pilot Line is the world’s first open-access Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) Assembly and Packaging Pilot line, and helps users exploit the breakthrough advantages of PIC technologies. Last week, PIXAPP hosted its 2020 Advanced Training Programme in Tyndall, transferring specialist expertise to external users.

This specialised industry training programme provided attendees with access to state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, and a comprehensive set of dedicated lectures and technical mentoring. The programme was delivered by international experts and coming from the PIXAPP European Consortium, ensured attendees gained a deep understanding of PIC technologies and critical PIC packaging manufacturing and assembly processes.

The 5-day interactive training covered fundamental technical skills in PIC packaging design, fabrication, assembly and reliability through a series of lecture-based and lab-based training. The industry training was a phenomenal success. Participants attended from start-ups, SMEs and Multinationals, from Europe, America and Asia to learn best practices and design rules on Photonics Packaging and Assembly.

'Informative'

One attendee commented: “I found the week long training course in packaging offered by PIXAPP to be incredibly informative.  In a short time, I got hands-on experience with a wide variety of packaging techniques - both optical and electrical - and heard from industry experts on the state-of-the-art.  The information and skills I gained this week will be instrumental in building in-house expertise and developing our own packaging process from the ground up. Thank you to the PIXAPP team for delivering an excellent training experience!”

The benefits of the programme are experienced long after the programme has finished. The PIXAPP team have fostered a community with attendees which means they continue to receive support with their ambitions and challenges experienced in the area of PIC technologies and processes even after the five day workshop has ended. 

Impact

Prof. Peter O'Brien, Director of PIXAPP highlights the impact of this hands on training programme to industry: There's much more to packaging than just spending time in the laboratory, the full ecosystem, the foundry, the design, the application, all linked up in the packaging. PIXAPP is addressing this scale-up, from ones and twos up to hundreds and thousands of parts,and then transferring that know-how that has been developed within the pilot line to industrial partners to scale it up to very high volume. What we're doing in PIXAPP is bringing people in, giving them practical hands on training in our packaging facilities.

To find out more about the PIXAPP Advanced Training programme or to register your interest for 2021, contact the PIXAPP team for more information.