HIKARU Summer School

Highlights of Joint EU UK Summer School on Optical Interconnect for AI, Hyperscale, Space and Quantum

In July 2025 in beautiful St Andrews, Scotland, we held an enormously successful Joint EU UK Summer School on Optical Interconnect for AI, Hyperscale, Space and Quantum 2025, from 8th to 10th July, which was supported by the UK projects HIKARU and EQUINOX, and the Horizon Europe projects: DYNAMOS, ADOPTION, ALLEGRO, OCTAPUS and PUNCH. 

This Summer School represented an unprecedented joint collaboration between multiple synergistic EU and UK projects and provided a comprehensive grounding in the full optical and photonic eco-system underpinning the new generation of hyperscale data centres and AI including emerging space and quantum communication applications, which draw from the new generation of hyperscale technologies. The key topics covered included:

• Photonic Integrated Circuits (passive and active) including an introduction to designing PICs
• Space communication
• Fast tunable lasers and laser combs
• Modulators and phase change materials
• Optical circuit boards (polymer and glass waveguides)
• High-speed transceivers (including silicon photonic and VCSEL based)
• Photonics packaging
• Switching and programmable photonics
• Quantum communication
• AI and neuromorphic computing

Attendance

This summer school was not just aimed at academics (post-graduates and researchers), but crucially young professionals from industry such as engineers, in order to disseminate and help build up a European skill base in these new crucial new technology fields from the ground up.

Over 80 people attended from industry and academia, which turned out to be an optimal number for networking and unrushed deeper technical conversations. In particular there many discussions between the supporting projects on areas of harmonisation and cross-pollination.

The tutorials and talks were given by a balance of industry and academia including project partners and international organisations.

Figure 1: Industrial and academic organisations giving tutorials and talks at the summer school

Speakers included: Katherine Bryant (VTT), Cleitus Antony (Tyndall Institute), Michail Symeonidis (Fraunhofer IZM), Prof. Chris Vagionas (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Prof. Geert Van Steenberge (IMEC, Ghent University, Richard Pitwon (Resolute Photonics, Seagate), Peter Ossieur (IMEC), Frank Smyth (Pilot Photonics), Weiming Yao (TU Eindhoven), Cathy White (BT), Prof. Takaaki Ishigure (Keio University), Prof. Andrea Di Falco (University of St Andrews), Mirko Pittaluga (Wave Photonics), Robert Palmer (Huawei), Prof. Gunther Roelkens (Ghent University), Alison McLeod (Technology Scotland), Frederic Gardes (Southampton University), Carsten Eschenbaum (Silorix), Hideyuki Nasu (Furukawa), Prof. Shiyoshi Yokoyama (Kyushu University), Henning Schroeder (Fraunhofer IZM), Taketsugu Sawaruma (Furukawa), Andrew Meek (Senko), Andy Vicks (STFC, RAL Space), Louise Wells (Toshiba) and Simon Hall (NPL).

“Taste of Scotland” Networking Evening

On the evening of Day 2 all attendees were invited to a Wine Reception followed by a “Taste of Scotland” dinner held in the ancient University of St Andrews Upper and Lower College Halls, which was extremely popular. The reception and dinner were also sponsored by Senko.

Figure 2: Summer school dinner. Main table from left to right: Chris Vagionas (Aristotle University of  Thessaloniki) – OCTAPUS, Cleitus Anthony (Tyndall National Institute) – ADOPTION, Katherine Bryant (VTT) – DYNAMOS, Henning Schroeder (Fraunhofer IZM), Richard Pitwon (Resolute Photonics) – EQUINOX and HIKARU, Hideyuki Nasu (Furukawa), Guenther Roelkens (IMEC, Ghent University), Geert van Steenberge (IMEC, Ghent University) – PUNCH and Abubakar Bhatti (Senko)