indispensable for the photonic industry

PhotonicsNL is the national association for Photonics and Optics in the Netherlands

PhotonicsNL is an organisation that facilitates networking, knowledge sharing, and matchmaking events. It also participates in national and international shows and trade and innovation missions. We create connections between our members and other communities and industries within and beyond the PhotonicsNL network. Additionally, we collaborate with other national clusters worldwide and participate in European projects and other initiatives to promote the importance of the Photonics and Optics industry.

Innovation

Our mission is to promote collaboration and exchange of ideas within the Photonics and Optics community.

Economic activity

We aim to promote the Photonics and Optics community in the Netherlands and beyond and raise awareness about the importance of this technology for the economy, industry, education at all levels, and the government.

our mission & vision

We have a clear vision what we want to achieve

Our mission: stimulate photonics and optics innovation and economic activity

Our vision

1

Enabling collaborations and cross-fertilization in the photonics value chain.

2

Propagating the importance of photonics for our economy and in all levels of education.

3

Promoting the national photonics community in the Netherlands and abroad.

Our strategy

With our strategy we make sure our members and partners are visible and well-heard in the entire supply chain.

Networking

Organizing networking, knowledge and matchmaking events.

Trade missions

Participating in international trade missions.

Links

Creating links between our members.

Projects

Collaborating in European Projects and with other national clusters.

Putting light to work

Photonics and Optics provide tools and solutions to every industry in the Netherlands and worldwide. Photonics-based innovations have fundamentally changed the way we live, work and play and will continue to do so. Light is fast, precise and clean – three unique and highly useful properties that make photonics suitable for a broad spectrum of applications.

we go way back from 1956

Our history

The history of Photonics in the Netherlands goes back to the Dutch Society for Photonics (NVvF) in 1956. In the earlier days of NVvF the association was completely focussed on Photography and Chemistry. Important partners were the Dutch Physics Society and the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. In the sixties the focus was more and more on Optics & Photonics. In 2006 NVvF decided to merge into the new foundation Photonics Cluster Netherlands (PCN) with the ambition to become the unique Dutch platform for Photonics.

In this period PCN was quite successful in fulfilling this ambition with 120 individual members and 21 company members as a result. One of the main activities of PCN was the organization of our national annual Photonics Event together with our partner Mikrocentrum and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).

During the last eight years PCN has had a close collaboration with the IOP Photonic Devices Advisory Board. The IOP Photonics Devices (IOP-PD) is the national research program on Photonics. This program started in 2006 and has ended in 2015. Thanks to this close collaboration we succeeded in having Photonics recognized as Key Enabling Technology in the Dutch Topsectors, especially the topsector High Tech Systems & Materials.

After reaching her ambition the next logical step for PCN was to become a new association under the name PhotonicsNL. The new assocation PhotonicsNL was founded on 14th October 2013. In January 2015 PCN has transferred all her present activities to PhotonicsNL. Since then PhotonicsNL aims to grow steadily each year.