Alliance formed to build public photonics research powerhouse in Ottawa

The Ottawa region’s publicly funded photonics research community has banded together to prime the pump of Canada’s largest photonics cluster with an alliance designed to draw expertise and capital into the sector. The Ottawa Photonic Research Alliance (OPRA) pools the efforts of four academic institutions and two major government research facilities (see box) to pursue research in photonic systems, devices, materials and the underlying fundamental science. All have committing resources to the initiative to help enhance and expand the region’s photonics research capabilities.

The driving force behind OPRA is the National Capital Institute of Telecommunications (NCIT), which was formed in 1999 and counts the region’s major academic institutions and many of the major telecommunications companies among its membership.

While communications will likely comprise the largest single area of research, there will also be projects in other areas including health care, biotechnology and manufacturing. The Alliance comprises more than 120 researchers and OPRA’s backers estimate that there is more than $100 million in public photonics research infrastructure in Ottawa. The aims is to bolster both and in the process attract even more private money to the photonics sector which last year secured 52% of the $900 million in venture capital that flowed into the region.

“The federal labs have a big budget for next year and if you can move it a couple of degrees or if you can create space to bring in a bunch of new post docs and graduate students … with a group of fulltime research scientists, the power of that is huge,” says NCIT president Dr Robert Crawhall, who previously headed up Nortel networks Corp’s disruptive network technologies unit. “This is where the issue of momentum comes in. The (public) money is almost a part of the available capital.”

For its part, the Communications Research Centre (CRC) has committed to making new investments in photonics research in the coming years. And the National Research Council (NRC) is moving forward with plans to build its long-awaited Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC), which received funding in the last federal Budget (R$, December 17/01).

The $40-million CPFC will be part of the NRC’s Institute for Microstructural Sciences, which has a long history of groundbreaking photonics research. At the Univ of Ottawa, plans are underway to use the Canada Research Chairs program to bolster its photonics research expertise. Vice rector Dr Howard Alper says U of O will establish eight photonics research chairs focussing on medicine, science and engineering.

The immediate task of pulling the Alliance together and defining its research agenda falls to Dr Maike Miller, NCIT’s VP research alliances and OPRA’s interim director. Miller says the intent is to develop an Ottawa-based national centre of excellence in photonics that will help drive the already powerful sector to new heights utilizing photonics research expertise from across the country.

“A lot of our researchers in the region collaborate with researchers in other photonics clusters. I’m sure there is some competition but more likely there is even more collaboration,” she says. “We have a research engine in photonics and we want to prime it.”

The fuel for the photonics research engine is obviously skilled personnel, and NCIT’s Crawhall is under no optimistic that OPRA can attract many of the best and the brightest. “Part of what we’re trying to do is invent our part of the innovation culture in Ottawa and engage a whole new generation of professors,” he says. “We also need to get a number of these PhDs from industry and re-skill them to be more on the public sector research side. Because in fact industry is shortening its time horizons.”

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