The EU CARLA project comes to an end with great results and future plans

The CARLA project, the European Photonics CAReer LAunch Path, has come to an end after 3 fruitful years full of events and productive meetings. CARLA was launched in 2020 within the H2020 network and aimed to encourage university students and researchers to pursue a career in photonic sciences. Overall, the outcomes of the project were positive which bring a bright future ahead for the following CARLA project. 

In specific, CARLA project was a collaborative initiative by a consortium of 11 European partners in different countries working together with over 100 stakeholders, including academia, industry, entrepreneurs, policymakers, HR, training experts, students and researchers. The CARLA events focused on reinforcing the knowledge of the participants regarding vast opportunities and careers in the photonics landscape and provide them with a roadmap for better employability. CARLA has been actively promoting careers in photonics through 13 camps (standalone events) and 8 capsules (sessions within another event) that took place all over Europe. In particular, more than 2,000 participants, 200 speakers, 250 academic institutions and 380 companies have participated in CARLA camps making the project successful.  

The feedback we received from all the camps was mainly positive with the participants actively participating and getting involved with the speakers and panellists. Positive comments were received throughout, such as: 

 

“By talking to the alumni, I received information that I believe will help me in my future decisions” 

“I’m quite surprised about how interesting, useful and motivational it has been. I didn’t expect it to be so cool” 

“I now feel more strongly oriented in my photonics career path” 

“I think CARLA Camp was a very diverse event, there was a wide variety of gender and national backgrounds, excellent!” 

“I got acquainted with the opportunities around and got to know people informally which might be useful for my future career step“ 

 

Another goal of the CARLA project was to create a rigorous, tested and reproducible instrument to support the growth, leadership and innovation potential in photonics at a European level. Therefore, a comprehensive handbook was designed including the methodology and scalability of the events. The handbook is aimed to ease the camp replication and promote a model for future European photonics career camps, so that everyone can participate and organize similar initiatives. CARLA has already inspired the Master in Quantum Science and Technology in Barcelona which organized an annual Quantum Careers Symposium based on CARLA. Moreover, CARLA has put special emphasis on empowering the importance of diversity and inclusion, therefore, a gender diversity guide has been assessed by the obtained lessons throughout the project. For instance, the percentage of women that participated in the camps and capsules were between the range of 20 – 47 % and we strive for a more balanced representation for future events. 

At last, CARLA has been featured in magazines and journals highlighting the career options to increase the photonics talent pool i.e., Electro Optics magazine; Journal of Physics: Photonics. CARLA social media was very active by the organizers and reached 200,000 impressions in CARLA hub media (CARLA webpage, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter). 

CARLA will continue its mission to promote photonic opportunities and follow up with the attendees for up to 5 years in order to picture their career paths and assess the overall impact of the project. A new CARLA.2 project is planned to take place in the following years.  

Despite the fact that the EU project has finished, the consortium remains and it is still working together. Additional camps are already being put together for 2023, as well as other CARLA events, in order to take advantage of the momentum created with the EU project and from the learnings we have gathered through it. We invite people to stay tuned and get in touch with us in case they are interested in organising or participating in CARLA events. 

About CARLA (summary)  

CARLA aimed to boost the numbers of students and young researchers pursuing careers in photonics, to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, and has put special attention to empower gender diversity. CARLA was an initiative by ECOP (European Centres for Outreach in Photonics), a long-standing partnership of European research and innovation centres passionate about outreach in photonics. The CARLA consortium, including 11 European partners, brought together leading photonics organizations with large experience in the coordination of outreach activities directed to different audiences. The consortium was coordinated by The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO – Barcelona, Spain) and it included Photonics Austria (PA – Weiz, Austria), Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V./Max Born Institute (MBI – Berlin, Germany), Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI – Milan, Italy), Institute d’Optique (IOTA – Pairs, France), International Laser Centre (ILC – Bratislava, Slovakia), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB – Brussel, Belgium), Delft University of Technology (TUD – Delft, The Netherlands), Photonics Sweden (PS – Kista, Sweden), Southern European Cluster in Photonics and Optics (SECPhO – Barcelona, Spain) and SwissPhotonics (VSLP – Wollerau, Switzerland).  

 

Links for social media: 

Website: https://carlahub.eu/about-carla/ & https://carlahub.eu/news-camps/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/carla-hub/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECOPalliance 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_carla_hub/  

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdldjUfN70n4ph8M5reJMsw 

 

Additional links: 

Electro Optics News 2020 

Perspective on the Journal of Physics: Photonics 2020 

Electro Optics magazine News 2021 

Quantum Careers Symposium 2022