In the context of the International Day of Light, and always keeping an eye on the need to bridge the gap between PhD students and their possible future in industry, we organized the event Lighten Up!

It consisted of half-day event with a double objective. On the one hand, we aimed to present a line of photonics for sensing which is quite different from the current lines of research of the PhD students in our university. On the other hand, we also wanted to show PhD students the start-up path, which nowadays is a growing career choice for them.

We brought prof. Andrea Fiore (Eindhoven University of Technology), who presented his various topics of research on sensing, to accomplish our first goal.

Then, after a coffee break, we continued with a round table, featuring Andrea Fiore (himself co-founder of several start-ups in the Netherlands), Francesco Ceccarelli (IFN-CNR) and Jacopo Frigerio (Politecnico). They are co-founders on two very young start-ups based in Italy, and on quantum circuits and vis-NIR imaging respectively.

We fully achieved our goal of discussing with them, through the great moderation of Yann Amoroux, the challenges in “starting-up”, the differences in both countries, and what could a fresh PhD expect when being employed by or even trying to found his own start-up.

This activity was fully supported, in terms of funding, by the Italian Society of Physics (SIF), and it has been included in the official listing of activities in the context of the International Day of Light, as instituted by UNESCO.