The science of light is applied in the technological field known as photonics, which has tremendous impact in areas such as medicine, communications, and energy. Photonics plays a crucial role in our modern society. Light pulses and glass optical fibre cables form the backbone of the global Internet. Satellite telephones and wireless technologies allow even the most remote areas of the world to have access to communications, information, and services including advanced medical care. Light technology is essential to issues such as energy independence. They allow for the innovative developments for the efficient conversion of sunlight to other energy forms (e.g. heat, electricity), and the development of other low cost and energy efficient green lighting solutions. Moreover photonics technologies are economic drivers. According to the report from the Photonics Private Public Partnership Photonics21, with the global photonics market growing at twice the world economic growth rate, from €350 billion in 2011 to a predicted €615 billion in 2020, photonics technologies have a major impact on the world economy. For this reason, governments around the world have identified the importance of developing large scale plans to help boost a global knowledge-driven economy, and to tackle issues that will make real differences in people's lives. For instance, the European Union has recognised photonics as a Key Enabling Technology and has invested over €700 million from the European Commission's Horizon2020 programme for the period 2014-2020.
Light science and technologies provide solutions to meet many of the urgent challenges currently facing the world, such as providing food to a growing population; developing clean sources of energy that can promote growth whilst having a low carbon footprint; improving education; reducing poverty and inequality; improving healthcare and quality of life for all. In this sense, photonics technologies can make a fundamental contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These are published as “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” and are an intergovernmental set of goals and targets developed by the United Nations that cover a broad range of sustainable development issues. Photonics provides important tools to end poverty and hunger, fight inequality and injustice, promote gender equality and quality education, ensure healthy lives and tackle climate change.
Despite the key importance of photonics in our society its benefits are largely unappreciated. Perhaps this is not surprising, however, because one of the great successes of photonics is how it has embedded itself seamlessly and invisibly behind interfaces that are centred on simplicity for the user. Yet it is clear that the scientific community needs to bridge this gap urgently, especially in view of the fact that photonics will become a prevailing technology in the coming decades and will impact all areas of life worldwide.
In this context, the United Nations declared the year 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies 2015 (IYL 2015). The IYL 2015 brought together hundreds of national and international partners in a multidisciplinary consortium. The year long series of events and activities highlighted to the citizens of the world the importance of light science and optical technologies in leading to an improved quality of life and for the future development of society. IYL 2015 has reached over 100 million people around the world.
The International Year of Light in Europe 2015 (LIGHT2015) project was coordinated by the European Physical Society (EPS). The EPS was also one of the leading institutions of the IYL 2015, thus ensuring smooth communications channels between the European and global activities. LIGHT2015 carried out events and actions planned throughout 2015-2016 to raise the profile of photonics in European region leveraging the enhanced visibility of the global International Year of Light.
For this purpose, the LIGHT2015 project Consortium included many of the leading institutions in photonics outreach and development in Europe. The members of the consortium represented three members of the Board of Stakeholders of Photonics21, and Europe’s major scientific societies in physics and optics, having access to an unprecedented network of contacts that allowed effective penetration of activities to the EU public. The LIGHT2015 partners were: European Physical Society Association (EPS; Coordinator), European Optical Society (EOS), Fundacio Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques (ICFO), National University Ireland, Galway (NUI GALWAY), Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI), Excite Youth for Engineering, Science and Technology (EYESTvzw), and Universiteit Leiden.
The project’s main goal was to promote the importance of photonics to young people, entrepreneurs, members of the industry and the general public. The project was structured in terms of three broad objectives: Explain Photonics, Inspire People, and Network Europe. The main elements of these objectives are summarized below
• Explain Photonics: One of the main goals of the LIGHT2015 project has been to explain throughout Europe what photonics is, and how and why photonics, a key enabling technology (KET) for the European Commission, is an essential technology in areas such as communication, energy, and healthcare. Other important focus of the project was showing how photonics technologies have a major impact on the world economy as well as being the perfect catalyst to promote careers in science. In addition, The LIGHT2015 project worked very hard to reach out towards high-level decision makers through targeted events during the IYL 2015
• Inspire People: Hands-on training and smartphone photonics experiments were developed to inspire a new generation of Young Scientists in Photonics and to promote the excitement of photonics science. Photonics is an ideal subject to inspire people and stimulate interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) careers. In this sense, hands-on initiatives have been key elements of the LIGHT2015 activities.
• Network Europe: LIGHT2015, and IYL 2015 provided a unique opportunity to Strengthen networking and collaborations across societies in Europe to promote the EU as the World Hub of Photonics. It needs to be mentioned that European scientists initiated the International Year of Light 2015 and European scientific societies and organizations played important roles throughout 2015. The fact that Europeans took the lead in promoting IYL 2015 is not surprising, given the central role that Europe has played in pioneering optical and photonics science.
