PhotonQBoost is committed to empowering European SMEs to achieve sustainability, resilience, and global competitiveness by harnessing the transformative potential of Photonics and Quantum solutions. Recognizing, firstly, the challenges SMEs face in accessing and integrating these advanced technologies due to limited awareness and resource constraints, and, secondly, the potential that technology deployment represents to boost the sustainability and competitiveness of European industry, PhotonQBoost aims to serve as a gateway for European SMEs to match their sustainability and resilience challenges with the solutions offered by Photonics and Quantum technologies. This will be done through a comprehensive pipeline of services, comprising advisory-driven innovation support, technology support and sustainability transition activities, complemented by piloting-driven projects funded under three FSTP open calls. More than €3,6 million will be spent on direct support services to the 600 SMEs that will be onboarded into PhotonQBoost service pipeline. These SMEs will achieve improved KPIs in terms of resource consumption, enhanced productivity and derisked supply chain disruptions. The initiative is also dedicated to fostering cross-fertilization across countries and ecosystems, through matchmaking activities and delegation visits, thereby facilitating market access for SMEs and bridging gaps in knowledge, networks and infrastructure. PhotonQBoost is a strong alliance of seven experienced European Photonics and Quantum clusters, four specialised consultancies and two Research and Technology Organisations, spread across nine EU Member States, that gathers a broad array of competencies. Altogether, PhotonQBoost members will help to consolidate an EU-wide Photonics and Quantum technological innovation ecosystem, ultimately contributing to Europe’s global leadership in both fields and to securing its strategic autonomy in critical technologies.

BestPhorm21 will provide the decisive support to Horizon Europe’s “Photonics Partnership”, which is currently established between the EU Commission and Photonics21, to stimulate the growth of the European photonics industry. The project is led by the Photoncs21 Secretariat, VDITZ, in partnership with 14 National Technology Platforms, representing Europe’s photonics industry, Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) and clusters. BestPhorm21 will develop a community driven European photonics industrial strategy and roadmap, engaging over 3,000 experts from industry and academia, that will guide Horizon Europe and industrial investments in R&D and advanced manufacturing. BestPhorm21 thus makes a significant contribution to increasing European technological sovereignty in a key digital technology such as photonics. It will furthermore establish new strategic value chains between photonics and end user industries, through the delivery of 7 additional “photonics enabled” end user industry roadmaps. This will be done in close cooperation with the respective industry stakeholders organsiations, more than 700 experts from both the photonics and end-user industries will be involved. The industrial strategy will result in new product launches and services that drive sales growth and support the digitalization of these sectors. BestPhorm21 will trigger cross-member state and regional investments, which mobilise and leverage Europe‘s full innovation ecosystem to keep Europe at the global forefront in photonics R&D and technology development, delivering cross-member state calls valued at > EUR 10 m and 5 interregional investment projects. Finally, BestPhorm21 increases access to risk finance for over 300 photonics start-ups and SMEs in their critical growth phases, through “blended finance” (European Investment Council’s Accelerator), “Venture Capital” (dedicated VC events) and “Venture debt” (European Investment Bank).

As in other Deep Tech areas, there is a shortage of qualified professionals in the field. This shortage is due to lack of education and training programs, unawareness of the career opportunities that the field poses, a rapidly evolving technology, and unfamiliarity with the different professional paths that the photonics ecosystems offers, among other. CARLA, the awarded project for the previous call, took on the challenge of promoting careers in photonics among students and researchers through the CARLA camps, photonics career camps. 360 CARLA seeks to build on the momentum created by the successful CARLA project, retain and increase the interest that the CARLA participants have acquired and expand the impact to more and more diverse university students and early-stage researchers. For that, we will create round up programs around photonics applications or markets, that we call verticals: 1) Health: Biotech and Medical Photonics; 2) Quantum Technologies/ Communications 3) Energy, Environment and Sustainability; and 4) Manufacturing/ Industry 4.0. These round up, cohesive programs will integrate career symposiums, mentorship, innovation and entrepreneurship experience and trainings. This will: - Increase the number of students and researchers interested in pursuing careers in photonics. - Appeal to additional STEM students and researchers attracted by the photonics application topic. - Provide participants with a round up, overall understanding of the landscape of the photonics ecosystem surrounding the corresponding vertical, supported by a network of contacts and mentors, experiences in photonics innovation and entrepreneurship and training. In addition, 360 CARLA will collaborate with other EU initiatives in the photonics space, working towards growing and better preparing the future workforce, or around the verticals, so that can leverage each other through sharing strategies, activities, content and dissemination channels. 

Phorwards21 will create and implement a comprehensive industrial strategy for photonics in Europe. The action will be implemented by Photonics21 (the EU Commission's partner in the Horizon Europe Photonics Partnership) with its more than 3000 members from companies and research institutions as well as national photonics technology platforms and regional clusters. In addition to already initiated collaborations with end-user and other deep-tech partnerships, contacts with national ministries (Photonics21 Mirror Group) and financial actors such as the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Investment Council (EIC) and (corporate) venture capital companies will be strengthened to implement the European photonics strategy and thus establish European strategic autonomy in this critical technology. Specific end-user community-based roadmaps will be developed, focusing not only on research priorities but also on industrial implementation, including pilot lines and the creation of appropriate framework conditions.

MIRACLE will take towards commercialization the first mid-infrared (MIR) arthroscopy probe for in-depth evaluation of articular cartilage enabling early diagnosis of degenerative joint diseases such as osteoarthritis (OA). The proposed device is intended for use during a minimally invasive surgery (arthroscopy). Currently, the surgeon’s decision-making is based on visual inspection and manual probing of the cartilage tissue which is highly subjective and of poor repeatability. Untreated or not-correctly treated joint injury will most likely progress towards OA, which will lead to joint pain, movement limitation, joint failure, and ultimately disability and joint replacement. OA constitutes a major challenge for the health systems and affects 242 million people globally. Moreover, OA is highly prevalent in Europe with an estimated 19.7-42.3% in the elderly population. MIRACLE concept is to access the biochemical on articular cartilage, which precedes OA. The feasibility of this approach as a diagnostic method has been demonstrated by MIRACLE consortium (TRL4). MIRACLE has also prototyped a MIR-probe with potential use for diagnostics (TRL4). By technology development reaching TRL 6-7, MIRACLE will bring to the arthroscopy market the first MIR-based probe providing an unique, accurate and quantitative diagnostic tool for the orthopedic surgeon. This will be achieved combining three novel photonics components: (i) a quantum cascade laser array tailored to biodiagnostics, (ii) an on-chip beam combiner for efficient radiation coupling, and (iii) MIR sensing probe for imaging. These components will be integrated in a medical device to be placed in the arthroscopy market (valued at $4 billion in 2015). In addition to add value to the European medical equipment industry, MIRACLE strives towards cost reduction of OA patients (currently costs/patient/year €10,452) contributing to more affordable public health care and promoting wellbeing in the European ageing population.