Photonics will Shape the Future
Darrick Chang’s FoQAL project highlighted as one of most promising photonics projects funded by the ERC
In 2009 Photonics was named by the European Commission as one of five European key enabling technologies due to its potential to offer innovations across a wide range of fields, including medicine, energy conversion and conservation, lighting and high-quality manufacturing, and information, among others. In light of the potential for photonics to shape the future, The European Commission invested EUR 700 million in research and innovation in Photonics through the Horizon 2020 programme. The European Research Council (ERC), the premier European funding organization for excellent frontier research has awarded 37 grants to ICFO researchers since its founding in 2009 for projects in which Photonics plays a decisive role.
CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service of the Europeans Commission, has recently published a Results Pack of 10 of the most promising photonics projects funded by the ERC. The including FoQAL, the project carried out by ICREA Professor at ICFO Dr. Darrick Chang in his ERC Starting Grant in which he produced nanophotonic interfaces that promise to reveal quantum phenomena between light and atoms never witnessed before.
The projects featured in this Results Pack are just a few examples of how photonics can change technology and affect our daily lives. Photonics is expected to create exciting new opportunities in the future, exceeding the limits of what can be achieved through conventional technologies.