This was the feeling that the 50 participants took with themselves the last 11th of November, 2014: determined to foster collaboration to develop new lasers, new applications and above all, new knowledge.
The goal was to put together research groups, technology centers and companies which focus on ultrafast picosecond and femtosecond lasers.
A day with great participation
The event was held at the Institute of Optics from CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) and attended by 52 participants, including leading experts in our country. The objectives were clear:
- to promote collaboration between the different actors to develop new technology and solutions that would reach the market and
- to turn R&D results to applications that this type of lasers can provide to different industrial sectors.
Throughout the morning 24 presentations were made explaining different developments in R&D, industrial and infrastructural applications. Also, there was a great enthusiasm and willingness to cooperate between attendees who did not stop repeating that this event must be maintained each year emphasizing a need of such forum in future.
A game designed to facilitate partnership
SECPhO proposed a game to attendees that would visualise the objective of the workshop – to develop a new generation of Spanish ultrafast lasers. During the event, an illustrator Judith Frigola drew different steps of processes of ultrafast laser development in scale of pico or femto seconds: Picolas y Femtolín (special thanks for design ideas to Pere Pérez (Chylas) and Luis Roso (CLPU)).
This game was made to symbolize the need for collaboration between all for a big boost of ultrafast laser industry in Spain in the coming years. The slogan and icon that displays this goal is the creation of two characters: “Femtolín & Picolas”.
During the presentations every participant could stick his organization logo at different parts of the laser development value chain indicating its priority research or expertise line in ultrafast lasers. This pictured well which members work in which part of the value chain and who could be a good collaborator on future. (Click on image below to see the company logos in each part)
All the presentations can be found on Spanish version of this article here.