ficonTEC puts down North American roots in University of Central Florida Photonics Incubator/CREOL
Germany’s ficonTEC Service GmbH has consolidated its North American operations in a new facility within the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) – specifically, in CREOL’s Photonics Incubator. The new location will include a regional ficonTEC Applications Lab, which the company expects will be equipped early this year to serve the integrated photonics assembly and test development needs of its North American clients.
The move comes as the company sees orders growing, but traditional supply chains becoming more tenuous. “We realized fairly early in 2020 that we would need to meet this challenge globally,” explained ficonTEC CEO Torsten Vahrenkamp. “North America in particular is proving pivotal in leading greater adoption of integrated photonics for communications, data centers and 5G, for sensors and automotive lidar, and for consumer 3D sensing, so we needed a dedicated expansion of the regional Sales and Service operations. With recruitment already initiated for 2021 and training completed at ficonTEC HQ in Germany, we now have a growing team of field service and application development engineers ready to get the job done.”
Stefano Concezzi will serve as the CEO of the newly incorporated ficonTEC, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of ficonTEC Service GmbH, and oversee operations at the CREOL facility. Soon Jang, who had led ficonTEC’s U.S. activities since 2007, will remain in a role ficonTEC described as “key account partner” until at least 2026.
The facility at CREOL will enable collaboration among ficonTEC, the university, and other members of the Photonics Cluster. ”The benefits in partnering with ficonTEC became quickly clear,” commented David J. Hagan, Pegasus Professor and dean at CREOL “It brings a new dimension to CREOL’s established photonics R&D groups, to the Florida Photonics Cluster, and to the broader U.S. photonics industry. Equally importantly, it will provide UCF students with an unmatched opportunity to learn the techniques of photonics integration. And by also providing regional support for process engineering for industry with the new Apps Lab, we anticipate many other new benefits and synergies, even funding opportunities. We are really keen to get started.”
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Stephen Hardy is editorial director and associate publisher of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report, part of the Lighting & Technology Group at Endeavor Business Media. Stephen is responsible for establishing and executing editorial strategy across the both brands’ websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products. He has covered the fiber-optics space for more than 20 years, and communications and technology for more than 35 years. During his tenure, Lightwave has received awards from Folio: and the American Society of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) for editorial excellence. Prior to joining Lightwave in 1997, Stephen worked for Telecommunications magazine and the Journal of Electronic Defense.
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