“If we are not acting we are losing generations”

Column by Hugo Thienpont

Last week, at the occasion of the Photonics 21 Annual Meeting in Brussels, Vice-President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes addressed more than 300 photonics experts from the industrial, academic and political world. During her key-note presentation  she pointed out that photonics is “an area with huge potential to power the future, “an economically vibrant sector for Europe” with “8% growth per year” with “graphics that go up instead of down in times of economic crisis”, and “a sector that is able to provide employment”.

At the same time she highlighted the fact that her biggest worry is that “our young people face catastrophic unemployment. If we are not acting we are losing generations”. The Commissioner indicated that “Europe is facing a shortage of talent in ICT. By 2015 we will need 700.000 more people in ICT. Therefore we need to get the young people more interested in those careers. The younger generation is talented, undoubtedly, but we should give them a hand to become the engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.”

In that respect Commissioner Neelie Kroes commended B-PHOT’s ‘Photonics Explorer’ project , presented by Amrita Prasad to the Photonics 21 community, as “a great initiative going on to bring photonics to Europe’s schools”, an initiative that “is making sense”. 

The Commissioner recommended everybody, and in particular industry, to support ‘Photonics Explorer ’ and “sign up for this initiative”.

We, here at B-PHOT, are very happy with this timely and unconditional support from the Commissioner and we promise to continue to act so that “we are not losing generations”. 

And because we cannot do this alone, I invite you all to join us in our efforts to ‘excite, engage and educate’ the younger generation.