Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIP) is a new paradigm in integrated optics which seeks to provide versatile and flexible circuits, systems and subsystems adaptable to a myriad of applications. In a way PIP follows a similar itinerary as that of integrated electronics 4 decades ago but with substantial differences. In this talk, after a brief introduction to PIP, I will focus on the Field Programmable Photonic Gate Array (FPPGA) device, where a common hardware becomes multifunctional by suitable software programming. I will discuss the different hardware and software tiers involved in its development and will also provide experimental results obtained both within our research group as well as in our spinoff company. Finally, I will develop some application cases (including RF-Photonics) for the device and discuss possible future evolution paths.

José capmany is professor of Photonics at the Universitat politècnica de València, Spain and leader of the Photonics Rsearch Labs (www.prl.upv.es). He holds a MSc+BSc+PhD in Telecommunications Engineering and a MSc+BSc+PhD in Physics. His research stands out in two fields: Microwave Photonics and more recently the programmable integrated photonics. He has published over 640 papers in international JCR journals and conferences in different field of optical communications and photonic processing. He received the Premio Nacional de Investigación (National Research Award) Leonardo Torres Quevedo in Engineering in 2020 and the Premio Rey Jaime I in New Technologies (2012) for his contribution to the fields of Microwave and Programmable Photonics. In 2016 he obtained an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to develop the field of Programmable Integrated Photonics and in 2019 a Proof of Concept Grant from the same institution. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET). He has co-founded 2 spinoff companies: VLC Photonics (www.vlcphotonics.com), (specific purpose photonic circuit design house recently acquired by Hitachi High Technologies), and iPronics, Programmable Photonics (www.ipronics.com), (programmable optical chips), selected by Nature magazine as one of the 44 companies to watch within the SpinoffPrize 2020 call.