Scotland has the
talent, skills and expertise to become a global powerhouse for the
multi-billion pound laser-enabled technology industry, External Affairs
Minister Humza Yousaf has said.
Mr Yousaf made the
comments on a visit to the Photonics Research Centre at Stanford University in
California’s Silicon Valley during Scotland Week 2014.
The Minister met
participants in the SU2P programme, a Scottish-US collaboration which aims to
create commercial opportunities from the world-class research in this field
taking place at four universities in Scotland.
Mr Yousaf
said:
“Scotland’s laser industry is part of a
booming worldwide business. Lasers are used in everything from mobile phones to
medicine, barcode scanners to Blu-Ray players. They are becoming increasingly
integral to our lives and the global optoelectronics industry – which
includes laser-enabled technology – is predicted to be valued at more
than $900 billion by 2015.
“Laser-enabled technology is already hugely
important to the Scottish economy, worth more than £660 million and
supporting high-value manufacturing, world-class research and highly skilled
jobs.
“Scotland is
a creative and innovative nation, and we have the talent, skills and expertise
to take advantage of the opportunities offered by this growing market. We are
proud to have both a strong academic base and a thriving laser industry that
manufactures cutting edge technology which is exported the world
over.
“The
challenge now is to maximise the commercial potential of our world-leading
academic success in this field, which is what the SU2P programme aims to
achieve.”
Professor Allister
Ferguson, Professor of Photonics at the University of
Strathclyde, said,
“The SU2P
link to Stanford has been of significant benefit to the Scottish Universities
involved and to the local companies associated with the programme. It has
inspired innovation and internationalisation and been transformative to careers
for researchers visiting Stanford, and vice versa.
“With the
recent grant of European funding SU2P has been able to extend to include 10
more Scottish based SMEs who are already benefiting from the opportunities that
that the collaboration offers.”
Dr Thomas M. Baer,
Executive Director of the Stanford Photonics Research Center said,
“Over the
past four years the SU2P program has forged a strong link between Stanford
University and the photonics scientific research and entrepreneurial
communities in Scotland.
“SU2P has
benefited greatly from the extensive support of Scottish Development
International and Scottish Enterprise. We all look forward to building on the
foundation provided by the SU2P program.”
Notes To
Editors
SU2P is
collaboration between the four Scottish Universities of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt,
Strathclyde and St Andrews, together with two Californian based universities,
Stanford and CalTech.
The collaboration
delivers an innovative approach to business engagement and provides facilitated
and flexible interactions between UK industry and university researchers in
Scotland and US. This commercially-oriented collaboration commenced in
September 2009 and builds on substantial world-class research in photonics in
Scotland’s universities and strong links to Stanford and Caltech. The
Stanford Photonics Research Centre (SPRC) has participated in this formal
collaboration agreement.
Scotland Week 2014
will run from April 7 -14, with Ministerial engagements taking place in New
York, Toronto, Vancouver, and San Francisco. For a full programme of events and
for further information on Scotland Week, please visit www.scotland.org or keep up to date with
#scotweek on Twitter.
Built around the
annual Tartan Day celebrations in the USA and Canada on April 6, Scotland Week
is an annual week long programme of business, political and tourism engagements
aimed at the promotion of Scotland as a great place to live, visit, do
business, study and invest with key North American markets in the USA and
Canada.