Day of Photonics – an interview with Dr. Stratos Kehayas, President of the Photonics Division at G&H

Q: What has drawn you to the world of photonics?

SK: The photonics sector captivated me from a young age due to its unique ability to be disruptive. Photonics can completely change the game whenever it is introduced into new applications, displacing the existing incumbent technology. I have been fascinated with light and the physics behind photonics and fiber optics since I was 16 years old. Because I'm a sci-fi enthusiast, I have been able always connect what I was reading or watching with ways in which we can generate and manipulate light. Just check out Star Wars, Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica – you’ll find plenty of photonics-inspired examples there such as tractor beams, laser guns and phasers, to name a few. Did you know that tractor beams actually exist and are used on the nano-level to manipulate atoms with application in bioengineering and quantum sensing?

Q: What do you find most surprising about the photonics industry?

SK: Despite the fact that we all use products made with photonics hundreds of times daily, the field is still considered an exotic niche. Considering the plethora of applications and areas photonics is underpinning, such as chip manufacturing, telecoms, space, biomedical imaging, laser surgery, AI etc. it’s frustrating to see that photonics is still not a very well-known industry. In this sense, we are failing as a community to explain to the rest of the world what we actually do. Electronics on the other hand managed to be established as a ubiquitous enabling technology, underpinning trillions dollar upstream industries. But, from a behavioral perspective, the status quo is no different for optics and photonics. Your laptop, your smartphone, your TV, your solar panels, your oven, your car - all incorporate tens or hundreds of steps that need lasers to get manufactured. The chips that can be found in every device need lasers to get manufactured. And still, if you ask someone what photonics are, they will think Sci-fi. AI chips, undersea networks, Mars rovers, planes, trains, automobiles, medical devices – all need photonics to function; the field is very diverse and the global impact, massive.

Q: So where does the issue of recognizability for the photonics field stem from?

SK: In my opinion, the issue stems from its versatility. Going back to the comparison with electronics, one might say the photonics branch is more technical, so automatically that would translate into it being less accessible to the public. But that is not the reason for its shadow position. The difference between the popularity of electronics versus photonics lies in the fragmented nature in terms of both technology and market verticals. Electronics are fairly standardized; If you think electronics you usually visualize a chip and a green circuit board that can go into virtually everything humans create. Photonics is very different. We are talking about a multi-material technology that can be applied in a plethora of applications; you can have multiple combinations of the periodic table that give you unique and exotic parameters that then in turn enable completely different applications. The versatility and power of photonics then becomes a weakness by being scattered, fragmented without critical mass and a single voice.

This status quo in our industry is why we need to overly disseminate, as a community, what photonics represent and concentrate on what we have in common rather than what is different. At the moment, we are focusing on the differences between us. But what we should do instead is to concentrate on the impact we have as a community on the world through the market verticals we're enabling. That extends to saving lives using photonic-enabled medical equipment, revolutionising the way we communicate with fiber-optics, enabling planetary exploration and making artificial intelligence a reality.

Q: Since you mentioned the disruptive aspect of the field, what are the inventions you would want to see happening that would change our world?

SK: Throughout my career, I have been present at different stages of industry disruption with photonics. There were a couple of instances that I joined the R&D community and did my part in pushing that boundary. So, I am personally invested in bringing even more of that side of technology into the world. We are approaching a few exciting new frontiers in photonics. For example, human interaction with photonic sensors is going to change the way we approach life sciences, with the advent of concepts like optogenetics. Photonic integrated circuits are going to be disruptive and together with quantum computing will revolutionise the world. Humans are not thinking fast enough to sustain the same level of evolution we have been seeing in the last few years – we need machines to help us advance as a species and get the answers we need. We can’t wait 80,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri – can we get machines to help us build photonic teleportation devices? The Flux Capacitor? We don’t want to exhaust the planet’s energy sources by operating these quantum computers, so we need projects like laser fusion to be successful and help us access atomic and subatomic energy pockets. So, simply put, we need Quantum Computers and AI to think for us, biophotonic integrated systems so we can live longer and infinite supply of energy – so I can finally take my well-deserved vacation to Alpha Centauri.

It is a privilege to be part of such a vibrant, forward-thinking field and work with a group of people who are talented and motivated. We just need to be more extrovert and don’t be shy to talk about what we do in our daily lives – we work in Photonics.