Collaborations

The ORC works with many other departments and institutions across the globe. We're always looking to expand and deepen our collaborative efforts.

There is a long history of discovery and innovation at the ORC, and we are well aware that collaborations with other organisations have been fundamental to our success.

So, if you are part of an academic or industrial research organisation with a national or international reputation, then we are interested in hearing from you. We are always open to new and interesting collaborations where a combination of expertise may be mutually beneficial.

The areas that we are currently working on can be fully explored through our Research Group pages, but we are also interested in exporing new areas, and not all of our most recent directions will have made it onto our website. We suggest making contact with the group leader of the area closest to the subject for collaboration, and including Professor David Richardson on the emails. Professor Richardson co-ordinates our collaborative efforts, and so he may be contacted if the enquiry is more general, or does not have a natural 'home' in any of our groups.

There is a very long list of historic and current collaborators with the ORC, and it is changing all the time. If you are already working with the ORC, and would like to be included on this list, please contact us, and include a logo if you'd like. Please make sure you give a name of at least one of the ORC staff you are working with.

Collaborations within the University of Southampton

• Electronics and Computer Science (ECS)
  ECS has a long history with optoelectronics, and the ORC was formed in part by an ECS group. Today, several staff members of the ORC are seconded from ECS, and there are many joint ventures between the two schools.
• Physics and Astronomy
  A group from Physics was the other partner in the formation of the ORC, and as with ECS, several staff are seconded from Physics. Some ORC researchers also teach on the Physics B.Sc and M.Phys courses.
• Chemistry
  Much of the work at the ORC relies on new optical materials. This means the School of Chemistry is another natural collaborator with the ORC. The ORC is also conducting research on chemical and biochemical sensing techniques, working with the School of Chemistry.
• Mathematics
  There are many exciting challenges in photonics that require sophisticated mathematical models to understand what is going on, and to predict new devices. Our empiricists and theorists works closely with groups in the School of Mathematics to explore these uncharted areas.
• Medicine
  One of the exciting areas of research at the ORC is biophotonics. New capabilities for detection, classification and sorting of bio material are being developed, along with a range of treatments involving lasers or light. The ORC is working with the School of Medicine to develope these new capabilities.

Collaborators in other universities

There are many collaborations maintained at either a group or centre level. Below is a list of just some of our current external collaborators.

• Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
  This collaborative research project aims to exploit the enormous potential of Microstructured Optical Fibres (MOFs), one of the newest concepts in fibre optics, to come up with new technologies to underpin the multi-billion pound industry of optical communications and measurement systems. This collaboration is supported by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) major award of £0.5m more...

• University College London, UK, CNRS-SIFCOM France, Universita di Trento, Italy, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, TEEM Photonics France, IMEP France and SSSUP Italy are all project partners on an EU project called Lancer. The project aims to realise compact, high performance, CMOS-compatible and cost-effective planar optical amplifiers and lasers for next generationoptical networks based on rare-earth-doped silicon-rich silica waveguides.

• University of Bonn, Professor Karsten Buse and Dr Elisabeth Soergel
  Using piezo force microscopy for domain visualisationin enegineered ferroelectric materials.

• The National Technical University of Athens, Dr Ioanna Zergioti
  Using lasers for light induced forward transfer (LIFT) for nanoscale structuring.

• QinetiQ, Malvern
  Uisng Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy (SNOM) to examine light propagation along waveguides, down to a sub-wavelength resolution.

If you are interested in including a link to your team, please talk to your ORC contact.