On 28 June 2022 we were delighted to welcome over 100 delegates including our students, alumni, supervisors, former staff, keynote speakers and a distinguished panel for our 21^st anniversary celebration and conference. The keynote speakers were Professor Kishan Dholakia, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews and Professor Laura Waller, Computational Imaging Lab, University of California, Berkeley.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training is the longest running Centre for Doctoral Training in Photonics in the UK. The Centre is jointly funded by EPSRC and Industry and has successfully been awarded five rounds of competitive funding.

The Centre was founded in 2001 by Professor Julian Jones and Professor Duncan Hand. Professor Jones attended the anniversary celebration and said ”When our Centre was born at the turn of the millennium, we knew that photonics had a great deal to offer to society, and our 21^st birthday was a splendid opportunity to celebrate what we have achieved, through our research and enterprise and the careers that our graduates have built.  Our current projects show that photonics is just as relevant to the world today as it was when our Centre began, whether in rebuilding the post-pandemic economy, tackling global environmental change or contributing to international security.  I look forward to many celebratory anniversaries to come!”

The Centre is led by Heriot-Watt University and is a partnership between Heriot-Watt and the universities of Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Strathclyde. Every student in the Centre is sponsored by Industry with 61 different Industrial Sponsors being involved with the Centre over the 21 years. 

The current Centre Director Professor Derryck Reid said “I am delighted that so many were able to attend our 21st anniversary celebration. Like all birthday parties, it was a real ‘family event’ in respect of the community of students, alumni, academics and industrial partners that our CDT brings together to pursue state-of-the-art research with the potential for near-term economic and societal benefit.”

Watch the short video of our Centre’s achievements below.