On 14th of November, 2014 the last ASPICE project (www.fp7-aspice.eu) review meeting took place in Brussels, Belgium. The aim of the project is to improve cooperation and collaboration among the photonic innovation clusters in Europe by exchanging best practices and leveraging the value/supply chain in two societal challenges where photonics is a key enabling technology, namely ‘Healthcare in an aging society’ and ‘Safety and Security for Europe’s citizen’.

SECPhO was a work package WP4 leader, responsible for workshop organisation and strategy development of photonics cluster collaboration in the EU. The last review meeting gave an opportunity to hear the European Commission´s feedback about project´s results. After constructive and motivating discussions the project was accepted. The project team received a very positive evaluation and was motivated to continue fostering collaboration between photonics stakeholders to make a better business environment for European SMEs that are the engine of Europe´s economy.

SECPhO would like to thank to all the project partners: KTN (UK), Opticsvalley (France), Optonet (Germany), FORTH-Hellas (Greece), National University of Ireland (Ireland) and EIT+ (Poland) and everyone that was involved in this great initiative that is not finished with this meeting and, hopefully, will lead to new challenges and initiatives in following years.

Great job, team, and we are looking forward to continuing collaborating on the strong basis that we built!