Varioptic, the company that holds the patents for liquid lenses made using electrowetting technology, has just won the Golden Photon. Costel Subran, vice-president of the French Optical Society and treasurer of France’s National Optics and Photonics Committee, awarded the trophy.
The Opto 2004 trade show organized an "Innovation Showcase" in partnership with the magazine Photoniques to display innovative products and expertise developed by French optics/photonics research and development teams to event visitors. Open to all existing or soon-to-be-created companies and to public and private research centers, the exhibit showcased fifteen French achievements in many fields, including lasers, communication systems, integrated optics, instrumentation, components for mobile imagery, and fiber optics.
Visitors were free to explore the products featured at the “Innovation Showcase” stand, located at the center of the exhibition, and to meet the teams responsible for designing and developing them. During the first two days of the show, Opto 2004 visitors were invited to vote for the “Innovation Showcase” product they thought was the most innovative. Votes were scattered among a wide range of products, a sign of the vitality of French optics/photonics research. The variable-focus liquid microlens of the Varioptic Company (Lyon) garnered the most votes and therefore won the first Golden Photon.
“We’re very happy to have won the prize,” says Etienne Paillard, Managing Director of Varioptic. “Our R&D; team is totally committed in developing this technology, which should spread to the entire optics market in the next few years, and we’re working very hard to add other enhancements to it. Today we’re proud to see our efforts rewarded by optics industry professionals…”
“We created the “Innovation Showcase” in 2003 to recognize French innovation in the field of optics,” says Jean-Paul Abadie, Director of the publication Photoniques. “Spurred by its popularity and the encouragement of Opto 2003 exhibitors and visitors, we decided to create the Golden Photon, a prize that sets the standard for photonics innovations. We think French optics/photonics research deserves support, encouragement, and recognition. This trophy was created to meet that need.”
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