Introduction to the Global Roadmap
From 19-21 April 2017, an innovation mission was organized by IA China for PhotonDelta and the TU Eindhoven. The goal of the mission was to get as much relevant Chinese parties involved in the Integrated Photonics Global Roadmap Initiative, for which the World Technology Roadmap Forum is organized by PhotonDelta June 14-16 in Den Bosch.
Integrated Photonics is a field of research and industrial development which offers a novel way of making chips, using photons instead of electrons as information carriers. This is an enabling technology with applications in many industries, having a potential similar to the semiconductor industry in the 70s. The Netherlands has world leading research institutes and companies in this field, united under the PhotonDelta. China is the biggest player in sheer volume of research, and also has big companies in this field, like Huawei.
The Global Roadmap Initiative has the aim to get all global parties in this field aligned to focus on relevant developments necessary to keep up with market demands, similar to what happened in the semiconductor industry in the 90s with ITRS. Relevant players from Europe, USA, Japan, Israel have already expressed interest of joining, but China had not been approached yet.
Roundtable in Shanghai
The Shanghai Science Hall
On this topic, prof. Ton Backx, CEO of PhotonDelta, gave a lecture at the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology on the 20th of Apri 2017, which was attended by experts in the field from Shanghai and Hangzhou, as well as a general audience of students. The lecture was followed by a discussion with the experts on how to include China in the global roadmap. Several experts expressed interest to travel to the Den Bosch to attend the conference and make the global roadmap a success for China, the Netherlands and the rest of the world.