Photonics innovation gets major boost with new U of O-Max Planck research centre

Third joint Max Planck centre in North America

World-leading expertise in photonics research at the Univ of Ottawa has attracted a joint research centre with the Max Planck Society (MPS) that will see the university partner with two MPS research centres to pursue fundamental and applied research. The Max Planck-University of Ottawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics (MP-uO CEQP) is just the third Max Plank joint centre to be established in North America and was the culmination of a rigorous peer reviewed process by MPS that selected U of O's winning bid.

(The other two joint centres are the Max Planck-UBC Center for Quantum Materials at the Univ of British Columbia and the Max-Planck-Princeton Center for Fusion and Astro Plasma Physics at Princeton Univ.)

The U of O-MPS agreement calls for each side to provide €500,000 (CDN $679,000) annually for five years, devoted primarily to facilitating the mobility of researchers and students between the two countries. For U of O, the new centre - located at the university's new $70-million Advanced Research Centre (ARC) - is the culmination of several years of investment and recruitment since photonics was included as a strategic priority in the early 2000s (see chart). Its extreme photonics program includes 10 Canada Research Chairs and a Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Quantum Nonlinear Optics held by Dr Robert Boyd.

U of O researchers will be collaborating with their MPS counterparts at two centres - the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics near Munich. Researchers will collaborate in two broad areas: nonlinear optics and attosecond or quantum photonics. Potential application areas include information and communications technology and renewables and biosensors and biodiagnostics.

The signing ceremony on May 26 preceded tomorrow's announcement that the Univ of Ottawa was successful in two photonics-related awards through the Canada Foundation for Innovation's Innovation Fund. The $13 million in awards cover 40% of nearly $30 million in infrastructure upgrades and instrumentation to complete the fourth and final floor of the ARC.

"Photonics has been one of our priority areas from the time the university had to produce its strategic plan for the CFI (in 2001) ... We put money and resources into this area and it became a cluster of expertise," says Dr Mona Nemer, U of O's VP research. "Things really became a springboard when we recruited Paul Corkum - Canada Research Chair in Attosecond Photonics -to the university. It made a huge difference having him on campus as he is very important in the field and was instrumental in many recruitments ... Paul has also really enhanced the collaboration with the National Research Council, bring the engineers together not only with the Steacie Institute where he used to work but also with the NRC's materials institutes."

Corkum helped lure CERC chair holder Boyd, who was recruited in 2010 from the Univ of Rochester with a $25-million commitment to establish a major research team and a new building.

U of O researchers like Corkum have developed long-standing ties with German researchers, putting the institution on the map with MPS. With the construction of the ARC, momentum towards official collaboration gathered speed.

"What's really important is the added value from the collaboration. The University of Ottawa made a strategic decision to invest at the interface of science and engineering, specifically physics, electrical engineering and computer science," says Dr Gerd Leuchs, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light. "That focus perfectly matches and complements the research programs of our Max Planck centres."

The two MPS centres are among 83 supporting German fundamental research in the natural, life and social sciences, the arts and humanities. Collectively the centres have 17,000 permanent employees including nearly 5,500 scientists and a 2014 budget of €1.6 billion (CDN $2.16 billion).

"Photonics is an area of strength for the entire city (of Ottawa). People think that after Nortel everything went away but there are many SMEs (small companies) in the area and Blackberry opened a site a couple of years ago," says Nemer. "There is a lot of activity in terms of research and innovation around photonics and the university plays an important role. Students go back and forth to industry, the NRC and here and is a great training environment for young innovators."

For the NRC, the MP-uO CEQP is a welcome addition to the critical mass of photonics expertise in the Ottawa region. In addition to conducting research, NRC operates the highly successful Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre and has strong linkages to CMC Microsystems which trains graduate students in designing new photonics-based devices. Key to successful outcomes is the kind of collaboration in evidence throughout the German innovation ecosystem.

"Germany is very organized and coordinated (and) it all seems to work," says Dr Dan Wayner, VP of NRC's Emerging Technologies portfolio. "Part of what I'm trying to do through a new approach to collaborations is to have players along the innovation pipeline, from universities to TROs (technology research organizations) like NRC, which is always connected to industry. Photonics in Ottawa is one of those areas where there's a huge opportunity and this announcement ... is global recognition of the success U of O has had with world leading photonics research and infrastructure, complementing NRC's role."

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