Photonics has been coined as a key enabling technology for the future. It is the physical science that focusses on all aspects of light – not only the visible light - and its technical applications. Photonics can be applied in various domains such as health, communications, imaging or lighting. Think about the barcode scanner which is used to scan your groceries at the cashier, LiDAR sensors for your autonomous driving car, laser surgery or glass fiber internet. This technology affects many different aspects of our daily life. Hence, there is a need for a lot of people with knowledge or interest in this area. Not only to do research but also to design, build, repair or operate systems that have photonic components and to consider photonics as an option for solving problems.

CARLA is an innovative Career hub for photonics. Through an iterative process of a series of meetings it aims to bring together people from all sorts of different backgrounds in 11 European countries. By bring together people from industry, start-ups, knowledge institutes and government it aims to attract students – not only university level – PhD’s and postdocs to consider to invest some time in learning about photonics as an advancement to their career.