A unique new academic-industrial alliance between ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ and ficonTEC, a global leader in photonics manufacturing, is expected to bring a boost to the region and provide access to sophisticated industry production tools for students and faculty researchers.
ficonTEC, a German-based company with locations in Europe and the Far East, is expanding to Central Florida β joining as a Soft Landing client and opening an Applications Lab on ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs main campus, inside . The new lab will serve as a research and development manufacturing facility for ficonTEC, and will also be open to ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ students, faculty and local industry partners. The lab is expected to open in March.
Torsten Vahrenkamp, ficonTECβs CEO, says the move started as an answer to interrupted global supply chains and growing demand for their products, in particular in North America where there is greater adoption of integrated photonics. The partnership with CREOL offers the added benefit of teaming up ficonTEC systems and engineers with Β ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs faculty experts and leaders in the field.
βWe could not have hoped for a better environment from which to re-launch our USA activities,β Vahrenkamp says.
CREOL students and faculty regularly produce prototypes and theoretical devices but are limited in their ability to create a functional model. ficonTECβs Application Lab will bring the precise, advanced equipment needed to fabricate the finished prototypes that attract investors.
βThis partnership brings a new dimension to CREOLβs established photonics R&D groups and in the United States as a whole.β βΒ David Hagan, dean of the College of Optics and Photonics
βThis partnership brings a new dimension to CREOLβs established photonics R&D groups and in the United States as a whole,β says David Hagan, dean of the College of Optics and Photonics. βIt provides ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ students an unmatched opportunity to learn the techniques of photonics integration.β
ficonTECβs expertise lies in the creation of assembly and test machine systems for the production of photonic components. Their intellectual property is founded on roughly 1,000 operational production systems located globally, and in applications that include communications, smart mobility, sensors for IoT, sustainability, clean energy and others. Applications include 3D facial recognition, Β mapping sensors in modern smartphones and the LIDAR assembly that self-driving cars use to scan their surroundings.
βLike many other companies before them, ficonTEC looked around the country and chose Orlando for its U.S. headquarters because of the assets we have built at ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ and our photonics incubator,β says Carol Ann Dykes Logue, site manager for the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ Business Incubator. βThis is a significant accomplishment to house this at our facility and in our community, and it should be a keystone for this industry for years to come.
CREOL offers graduate degrees in optics and photonics and a bachelorβs degree in photonic science and engineering. In the first months at ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½, ficonTec plans to Β work with photonic integrated circuits in CREOL labs as well begin training students on virtualized assembly systems.
FiconTEC is the fourth company to join ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs Photonics Incubator within the CREOL facilities, and the first and only to offer its own manufacturing capabilities. The incubator is also home to LC Matter Corporation, Plasmonics and Olkin Optics. Companies in the Incubator may use CREOL laboratory facilities, benefit from collaborations with faculty and graduate students, and access ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs business development resources.
