Bringing cutting-edge photonics into the classroom

With branches focusing on both industry and education, Spark Photonics is uniquely positioned to bring up-to-date research into its educational programmes, giving school students a glimpse into real-world photonics careers and putting advanced manufacturing on their radar.

An interview with Kevin McComber, CEO of Spark Photonics Design and executive director of Spark Photonics Foundation and Laura Hiscott, Editor of PIC Magazine.

LH: Can you tell me about Spark Photonics and how it got started?

KM: Spark Photonics is a brand name that’s actually two legal entities. There’s Spark Photonics Design, Inc., which is a commercial PIC design services company. Then there’s Spark Photonics Foundation, Inc., which is a nonprofit STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) educational outreach company. I’m the CEO at the design company and the executive director of the foundation.

The genesis of both entities came from work we were doing at MIT back in 2018 and 2019. I was on staff doing education and workforce development (EWD) as part of AIM Photonics, which is a large PIC initiative out of New York. MIT at the time led all of AIM Photonics’ EWD, and I was assistant director there. When I was hired, it was part of my job description to start up design services. I met my co-founder, Al Kapoor, at one of the AIM events where he was looking for PIC design services. That’s how we came up with the idea for Spark Photonics Design.

At the same time, we felt there was a missed opportunity in K-12 to talk about photonics. AIM was focused mostly on graduate students and the incumbent workforce. We felt that, if we’re going to build a long-term workforce, we’re going to have to start early and work higher up in the funnel of future talent. That’s where we can really move the needle. That was the genesis for Spark Photonics Foundation.

We started the two organisations on the same day in 2019. The foundation found its legs under a US Department of Defense (DoD) grant award to create what is now our flagship K-12 STEM educational outreach programme, SparkAlpha.

We like to think that we’re unique in that the need of the technology side informs the need for the EWD, and that the latter is so closely aligned with industry and led by someone who has a technical background in the subject. We see a lot of EWD organisations led by folks who are traditionally in the education space. Or if they come from industry, they might not be up to date with the current technological advances.

We actively use what we’re learning in design to inform our programming and the material that’s being taught. For instance, we’re working on a project with the University of Rochester and AIM to do sensors for human viruses on a chip, and we use that as an example for students in our educational programmes, because it is happening right now. It doesn’t get any more current than this.