The US Congress has been lobbied by the Optical Society (OSA) at a launch event called Essential Technologies for Our Future: Optics and Photonics Leading the Way, to support the recommendations of the recent National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) report Optics & Photonics: Essential Technologies for Our Nation.
The briefing to members of Congress was preceded by keynote addresses from the US government’s Secretary of Energy and OSA honorary member Steven Chu and former Intel president and CEO Craig Barrett. Chu and Barrett highlighted the key role optics and photonics technologies play in driving economic growth, creating jobs and enabling future innovations to advance society. The briefing saw those same points underscored to members of Congress and their staff.
‘Optics and photonics are incredibly important to the US economy and its competitiveness in the 21st century,’ said Barrett. ‘Proposals like this [report] are critical to the US and it is dreadfully important that policymakers not only accept them, but that they do something with it.”
The event was co-sponsored by OSA, the American Physical Society and the IEEE Photonics Society and SPIE.
