Career pathways and ladders for photonics technicians

Since operational lasers were first demonstrated in 1960, the field of laser/electro-optics has become an indispensable, rapidly expanding component of modern industry. With the emergence of numerous medical and telecommunication applications in the 1980s, including fiber-optics, the field of laser/electro-optics evolved into photonics, a broad field encompassing optoelectronics, micro-optics, lasers, digital imaging, spectroscopy, optical instruments, and optical systems. Today photonics is not only a technology field in and of itself but is also an enabler of nearly every other technology field, including microtechnology, measurement and materials processing, remote sensing, photolithography for semiconductors, nanotechnology, electro-optics displays and imaging, and national defense.