Bringing together graduate students and companies to solve industry-related problems in optics and photonics

Abstract

For the last fifteen years, Universite Laval’s SPIE Student Chapter has been building strong links between academia and industry to better prepare its student members to face their future career and to guide them towards industry. With now over fifty companies working in the field of optics and photonics in the Quebec City area alone, this makes it one of the best places in the world for students to visit companies and learn about companies’ expertise, equipment and work environments. In 2017 and for the first time at Universite Laval, the Student Chapter organized a day-long workshop where students had to solve real-world industry-related problems presented by high-end optics-related companies, i.e. an industrial seminar. Now at its fourth edition, a retrospective picture investigating the success of this event can be drawn. Over the years, more than 20 companies from Quebec City’s rich optics and photonics area were invited to present their domain of expertise to students through conferences, product demonstrations and original problem scenarios encountered in the past. As a result, no fewer than 100 students were familiarized with the work of these technology companies. They also exchanged and shared ideas with expert engineers, physicists, chemists, etc., and were given real-world problems to solve. From this process, direct links were created between the employers and the future employees, and a clearer picture was drawn for graduates envisioning an industrial career. Consequently, this event has shown to be beneficial for both students and companies.