Advancing Photonics Technologies Information

Advancing Photonics Technologies (APT) is a regional photonics collaboration of capital and innovation, economic development & regional engagement, industry and startup, and academic network partners. We are a National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engines Development Award and serve Photon Junction, the region composed of New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware. APT will facilitate, fund, and fuel use-inspired research, technology translation and innovation, and workforce development, establishing critical regional supply chains and supercharging American leadership in optics and photonics, advanced manufacturing, and domestic job creation and retention. Photonics, or the generation, detection, and manipulation of light, forms the cornerstone of countless modern technologies that we depend on every day. Advances in national security and defense, aerospace, AI, energy stability and efficiency, medical devices, consumer electronics, communications, advanced and precision manufacturing, and more depend on light-based technologies. Photonics is to the 21st century what microelectronics was to the 20th century. It is the “physical AI” providing the critical infrastructure with which AI receives information and upon which AI runs. We will not only create, but also define our future by the diligence, speed, and intentionality with which we harness photons running through fibers, rather than electrons running through wires.