center

Mankind today is facing a multitude of challenges in the areas of health, energy, communication, environment, nutrition and safety. To solve these urgent questions about the future, the field of optics/photonics can make important contributions. The interdisciplinary centre ultra optics (Centre for Innovation Competence - ZIK) at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena takes up these challenges and conducts research and training in this field for the future together with its partners from academia and economics. The centre's strategy follows an integrated approach that takes into account transfer elements into the industrial utilisation, with these key objectives:

Research

control of light with extreme properties through nanostructured materials

Training

establishment of integrated international training programs in optics/photonics at the interface of physics, chemistry and materials science

Transfer

driver of innovative optical/photonic solutions in the fields of life sciences, energy and security.

The Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) advertised in 2002 the program "Centres for Innovation Competence: Creating Excellence - Securing Talent." It has stimulated a strategy process, which led to a restructuring of the research field Optics and Photonics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. The Junior Research Groups established through this initiative acted as nuclei for a professional focus and the establishment of the university centre ultra optics, which was designed by a coordinated appeal and investment policies of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.

Today the centre ultra optics is a synonym for successful research at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena with extensive cooperative relations in science and economics and structural roots in innovative training programs. Since its founding in 2005 the centre members have been publishing more than 300 articles in academic journals (peer review); the cumulative external funding during this period was more than 20 million Euros. The core of the centre are the two areas of laser physics and nano optics, which are prospectively and spatially brought together by the Abbe Centre for Photonics in new research. This combination of research groups presents - just as the Science Council confirmed in 2009 - a unique characteristic in Germany.

Significant development stimuli have come out of the centre ultra optics in recent years that led to the establishment of sustainable structures and cooperative relations with other institutions of science and economics, which reach out far beyond the university. Prominent examples include the recent establishment of the Helmholtz-Institute Jena and the establishment of networks of expertise, such as "PhoNa - Photonic Nanomaterials", "OptiMi - Competence Triangle Optical Microsystems" or "onCOOPtics - High-Intensity Laser for Radiation Oncology", and the Collaborative Research TR7 and TR18. These networks are supported in part by excellence programmes of the BMBF and the German Research Foundation.

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