ICFO and SPIE partnership expands access to photonics-focused education

In 2020, SPIE and ICFO, the Barcelona-based Institute of Photonic Sciences, announced the $1 million SPIE@ICFO Chair for Diversity in Photonic Sciences as part of the SPIE Endowment Matching Program.

The fund supports the SPIE@ICFO chair program, enhancing ICFO’s educational activities as well as its promotion of diversity. Some of the transformative opportunities include the SPIE@ICFO María Yzuel Fellowship Award Internships, named for the longtime advocate of women in science and former SPIE President; the SPIE@ICFO Chair Travel Fellowships; and the SPIE@ICFO Chair Research Fellowships. But, as ICFO Head of Academic Affairs and Chair of the SPIE@ICFO program Robert Sewell points out, the partnership has also led to new SPIE-ICFO projects as well as raising the profile of some of ICFO’s other programs.

The María Yzuel Fellowships — six per year, available to students from across the globe — offer undergraduates and master’s students internships with an ICFO research group. Internships can cover a three-month stint or a year-long master’s thesis project, and the wide-ranging work of ICFO’s groups showcases the wealth of educational options available to the students.

ICFO, 70 percent of whose faculty, researchers, and students hail from outside Spain, supports researchers working in laser science; quantum optics, quantum science, and its applications in quantum technologies; quantum and advanced photonics materials; clean energy and sustainability; nanophotonics; biophotonics, biophysics, and medical photonics; and the fundamentals of light-matter interaction, “the basic science underpinning it all.” It’s one of the advantages of being a broad-scope, photonic-sciences institute, notes Sewell. “Photonics underpins so many different areas of science; our groups span a wide gamut.”

“We have a medical optics group that is doing diffuse optics for the diagnosis of various different illnesses by using diffusion of light through the skin,” says Sewell. “They're monitoring brain development in neonatal babies, working with dementia patients, working with cancer. We've got groups researching cellular biology using microscopy, exploring the biology of organisms such as worms, for example, and how mechanical sensation gets transduced into their behavior. And then others are working on two-dimensional materials like graphene and other materials that you can use to make interesting devices or to study the fundamental properties of those materials.”

The institute also has researchers working with industry, interested in more immediate-impact applications in technological development or medical optics: “Our researchers are helping spin out an idea which might become a company, or generating patents and innovations that may be licensed to companies; they are going out into hospitals, working with medical doctors, taking data from patients in clinical trials, and developing clinical protocols.”

That dovetails nicely with addressing the worldwide need for a photonics-focused workforce for which, Sewell says, diversity training is also key. “Whether you work in academia or industry, as a scientist you need to be able to work all around the world with different groups of people. We’re giving people career-focused opportunities while opening their eyes to the importance of diversity and inclusion principles in how they interact with their colleagues.”

The SPIE@ICFO program has provided enhanced visibility — and an important endorsement — for ICFO’s many diversity and inclusion activities. These include their participation in DigiQ, a Pan-European effort to coordinate master’s teaching across multiple universities’ master's programs in quantum science and technology; the CARLA (CAReer LAunch) program, which provides career development for STEM students; and the three-year-old Be An ICFOnian for A Day, which offers undergraduates hands-on experiences with ICFO research groups and spin-off companies.

But perhaps the most salient aspect of the partnership with SPIE is playing out through ICFO’s Frontiers of Light program. This series of week-long schools, open to students from across the globe, has been running since 2016, originally in conjunction with the National University of Mexico. The SPIE partnership enabled the expansion of the program, particularly through the endowment-supported travel fellowships — giving more students the opportunity to attend the schools — as well as through the research fellowships which offer some attendees follow-up internships at ICFO. 

“These fellowships added a big element,” says Sewell. “We now run these schools regularly not only in Mexico, but also in India. And having the opportunity for an internship at ICFO is a big pull for the students: it’s one thing to learn a few things over a week, and quite another to have an extended, hands-on experience at a top-quality research institute. That really opens up opportunities to pursue a scientific career that students wouldn't have had otherwise.”

In 2023, ICFO’s Frontiers of Light added Ghana, its first African location, to its roster. This is the school, according to Sewell, that perhaps most closely embodies the collaborative and empowering spirit of the SPIE@ICFO program: the original suggestion came from a Ghanian student at ICFO who connected the institute with his faculty at KNUST, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi.

At the ICFO Frontiers of Light Ghana School in 2023: Provost of the College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences at the University of Cape Coast Professor Moses Jojo Eghan (second from left) with students of the university’s physics department (from left to right): Priscilla Melebor, Millicent Adwoa Dickson, Rabbi Boateng — the first author of the poster — and Isaac Kofi Yeboah. Image credit: KNUST.

“They already had very successful programs in physics, electrical engineering, and biomedical engineering,” says Sewell. “And they saw a demand for and wanted to develop the capacity to teach photonics and optics. For them, this was a real opportunity to kickstart that within their university. We had students from across Ghana, from Rwanda, from Kenya, from Nigeria. We had [SPIE President-Elect] Peter de Groot and [SPIE Community Engagement and Chief Inclusion Officer] Allison Romanyshyn joining us there, and in September, we'll have a student from that school joining us to do an internship with Professor Antonio Acín, a theorist working in quantum information science.” All that synergy, says Sewell, “is just fantastic.”

It also fits appropriately with an ethos that ICFO and SPIE share. “Everybody deserves the opportunity to be able to participate in science and scientific research,” says Sewell, who works closely across all these efforts with SPIE@ICFO program Vice-Chairs Silvia Carrasco and Laia Miralles. “Everyone should benefit from such research, but being able to participate in and contribute to it — everyone deserves that opportunity.”