Dr. Bill Ring, Chief Product Officer at Vector Photonics, was a guest panellist at this year’s PIC Summit Europe 2023. Bill was contributing to the panel, ‘Photonic integration for LiDAR – monolithic, hybrid or discrete?’, which considered the different platforms and approaches available when designing new LiDAR systems.

Bill explained, “It was a pleasure to attend the PIC Summit and contribute to the discussion on photonic integration for LiDAR. The panel covered some of the different design platforms available for LiDAR systems, including what parts can be integrated into a PIC and what parts are best accomplished with micro-optics. The panel then went on to look at the trade-offs between performance, cost, scalability and reliability, and the role supply chain maturity plays on these factors. The contributing panellists were world-renowned experts from the photonics industry and the resulting discussion was both in-depth and informative. It was great to be involved.”

The LiDAR panel discussion took place on 7th November and was chaired by Boudewijn Docter, of EFFECT Photonics and HTXL. Bill’s fellow panellists included Ronald Broeke of Bright Photonics, Stanislav Aksarin of Scantinel, Tobias Mueller of Aixemtech, Tim Koene of EFFECT Photonics, and Douglas Aguiar PhotonPath.

The PIC Summit Europe was held in Eindhoven, Netherlands and is considered amongst the most influential events in the photonic industry calendar. The PIC Summit encourages discussion, collaboration, and innovation amongst end-users, academics, investors, designers, and manufacturers, from across the photonics industry.