Professor Graham Reed, a globally recognised leader in silicon photonics at the University of Southampton and one of the driving forces behind the UK’s Cornerstone Photonics Innovation Centre, discusses how this field has evolved over the past few decades and what is in store for its future.

Silicon photonics (SiPh) is an exciting field. It is the application of photonic systems with silicon as the optical medium. Over the years, SiPh has developed into a mainstream technology driven by advances in optical communications. It can be used in a wide variety of applications ranging from telecoms and sensing to lidar, AI and quantum.

The Cornerstone Photonics Innovation Centre (C-PIC) based at the the University of Southampton has been established as the UK’s technology hub for SiPh. As an open source, licence-free SiPh prototyping foundry, its mission is to build a pipeline of SiPh-enabled companies serving multiple industry sectors by 2030.

What initially drew you to SiPh and how has the technology...