About the project
This project will investigate the UK’s semiconductor innovation ecosystem needed to support companies innovate using semiconductor manufacturing processes to accelerate the transition from prototypes to scale-up ready for high value manufacturing.
This project at the CORNERSTONE Photonics Innovation Centre (C-PIC), offers the opportunity to shape the future of innovative manufacturing for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The aim of this research is to develop a firm-level innovation process to accelerate the transition from early prototyping to successful scale up ready for high value manufacturing.
The preliminary stages of this research will involve researching numerous aspects of the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem and in particular photonic integrated circuits. An empirical study of the CORNERSTONE ecosystem and its partners will support the development of an ‘as-is’ innovation process and scale-up method for silicon photonics. Next, a comparative analysis will evaluate current practice against existing academic research on managing and measuring innovation, the determinants of innovation capability, and reflecting on the contingent nature of innovation practices in order to develop a new innovation scale-up process for silicon photonics. The proposed model will then be further evaluated and refined with practitioners.
This project will include a variety of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods such as surveys, interviews and workshops with photonics companies. The outcome of this research will be a sustainable framework that will define action plans for UK semiconductor companies at various stages of maturity levels to successfully accelerate innovation scale-up from the early innovation and prototypes stage to manufacturing stage. The project will make use of open datasets from CORNERSTONE, whose new Open Platform enables You will work alongside experts in photonics, electronics, and machine learning, contributing to one of the UK’s most innovative open-science photonics programmes.
You will join the world leading Optoelectronics Research Centre. This project will be co-supervised by Business School, and the university's technology accelerator Future Worlds. We’ll also support the development of your future career and give you opportunities including teaching assistantships, professional networking via leading organisations, and access to Future Worlds to explore commercialisation of your research. You will also have the opportunity to access C-PIC’s hands-on training for design, test and fabrication of silicon photonic devices and several other training events.
The School of Optoelectronics (ORC) is committed to promoting equality, diversity inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena SWAN award. We welcome all applicants regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age, and will give full consideration to applicants seeking flexible working patterns and those who have taken a career break. The University has a generous maternity policy, onsite childcare facilities, and offers a range of benefits to help ensure employees’ well-being and work-life balance. The University of Southampton is committed to sustainability and has been awarded the Platinum EcoAward.
