March 27, 2009: The head of SPIE, the International Optics and Photonics Society, urged a panel in Washington, D.C., to push Congress for a more-comprehensive national policy on development of photonics research, according to a report in Photonics Online.

Eugene Arthurs told a three-person panel before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that the current photonics technology portfolio in the United States is “fragmented.” He said that a national policy would apply Department of Energy research, for example, into solar energy manufacturing, according to the report.

The commission reports to Congress on the trade and economic relationship between the United States and China.

“The US may continue to be world leaders in the science of LEDs or the semiconductor lasers that power the Internet, but the location of the semiconductor foundries and the know-how to manufacture in volume suggest that these ‘green manufacturing’ jobs will be outside the US,” Arthurs said.