Maintaining, and strengthening, research excellence

Our success in winning Research Council funding has enabled us to create a portfolio of diverse, but interrelated, research themes. Our reputation for delivering excellence in research forms the platform for our work with industry, provides the essential component for our external audience in determining how they perceive the Institute, and has, and will continue to support the development of a portfolio of research outcomes on which knowledge transfer efforts can be based. Research excellence is an essential tenet of our approach which must be maintained and strengthened.

Our current research is arranged around four teams - all solid-state laser engineering; III-V semiconductor optoelectronic devices; GaN materials; and applications - although cross-team working plays a major part in the Institute’s activities. This cross team working makes the Institute unique and acts as a differentiator when competing for research funding. It is essential that our portfolio is dynamic, grasping new research opportunities and challenges as they develop, while remaining a coherent body of work attractive to a range of public and private research sponsors.

We regularly evaluate our team structures, for example to introduce new elements to a particular team or to identify the creation of additional research teams – as happened in 1999 with the introduction of the GaN materials team. This is done by “research foresighting”, a process by which the Institute management identify and discuss possible future research topics and determine if they can be accommodated within existing teams or require the creation of a new team. Factors like research challenge and excitement; commercial benefit of the research; benefit of this research to the Institute, the University, other beneficiaries; integration with current research topics; is this research being undertaken elsewhere; infrastructure required etc., are all taken into account.

Extending industrial interactions and knowledge transfer activities

Our deliberate identification of research with commercial potential and our level of involvement with industry are what differentiate us from a typical University research department. Effective interaction with industry requires alternative organisational structures to be established and maintained, skilled personnel to be selected and trained, suitable infrastructure to be procured and sustained, and the ethos of the organisation to be such that industry is comfortable in working with the organisation.

The research grants won from the Research Councils form the platform on which we engage with industry on a collaborative or on a one-to-one basis. Leveraging these grants to drive our industrial research and commercialisation activities is a challenge the Institute has faced since its creation.

Knowledge Transfer has, relatively recently, risen in importance in the Government’s strategy and the Institute is playing a part on a number of fronts. For example, we are actively involved with DTI funded Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) in Photonics (PKTN). This provides over £3 million in funding over 3 years to establish and maintain this KTN. The Institute is also involved in the KT efforts of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA). The Institute is also a member of Photonics 21, the European Technology Platform in Photonics, designed to define research, technology and development priorities, timeframes and budgets in photonics so that future funding calls will be relevant to the needs of the community.

People

The people working at the Institute are the single most important factor in our success. The selection and retention of staff is a major issue in any work environment and we must ensure that we offer effective routes for personal development as well as an environment which actively promotes staff well-being.

Management

The day-to-day management of the Institute is overseen by a Management Team made up of the Chief Executive, Technical Director, Business Development Manager, the Institute’s Administrator and the senior research staff, responsible for each of the Institute’s research teams. This group meets monthly.

The Institute has created an Advisory Group (AG) which is made up of representatives of the original Core Partners of the Institute, including the University, Scottish Enterprise and Thales. Industrial members of the AG are, in addition to Thales: Coherent ( Scotland); Astra-Zeneca; Honeywell; Point Source and PRP Optoelectronics. The AG meets quarterly and takes a key role in helping shape the future strategy and direction of the Institute. It also receives regular financial and operational reports.

Some Metrics

The following details some of the Institute’s metrics as of October 2007.

• Since created, the Institute has leveraged over £16 million in competitively won grants and contracts from initial seed funding of approximately £750k.

• Our current complement of staff and PhD research students number 54 in total, with approximately half of our students coming from overseas to study at the Institute.

• We have worked with over 150 companies, about 50% of whom were SMEs. About 20% of the companies we have collaborated with have come from overseas.

• The Institute currently holds the 4 th largest portfolio of EPSRC grants in the University (over £6m), behind only the Departments of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, Physics and Pure and Applied Chemistry, all of whom are significantly larger both in terms of Principal Investigators and total numbers of staff.

The Institute’s aim of bridging the gap between the academic world and the industrial one is a challenging one. The gap is variable - in certain areas is straightforward to bridge - in others it is far more difficult.

The model we have developed and refined since 1996 has proved to be robust and successful and has allowed the Institute to grow both in terms of research and staff and students. The Institute will continue to explore avenues to commercialise its research while maintaining our ethos of research excellence. There is little doubt that there are interesting times ahead for photonics in general and the Institute is ideally placed to play a major part in the delivery of commercially oriented photonics research in the 21 st century - for the benefit of us all.