EU awards 鈧�4.5 million MSCA Doctoral Network grant in spatiotemporal photonic technologies
Light is at the heart of modern life. It carries data through the internet, enables high-speed communication, powers advanced sensors, and plays a growing role in computing and artificial intelligence. Yet today鈥檚 photonic technologies are reaching their limits: they are often static, slow to adapt, and increasingly energy-hungry.
To overcome these barriers, a new European doctoral network in photonics, SPARK 鈥� Spatiotemporal photonic technologies 鈥� has been awarded 鈧�4.5 million under the Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks program to transform how light is generated, shaped, and manipulated. Running for 48 months, the project will train 15 doctoral candidates through a coordinated research and doctoral education program focused on controlling light in both space and time.
SPARK addresses a central challenge in photonics: how to move beyond static or slowly tunable optical components toward systems that can manipulate light with far greater speed, flexibility, and efficiency. The network will combine spatiotemporal metamaterials with spatiotemporally structured light to create programmable optical responses with control over frequency, phase, momentum, polarization, and angular momentum. Its research and training activities are organized around three connected areas: developing spatiotemporal metamaterials and their theoretical foundations; generating and controlling spatiotemporal light fields with metasurfaces and photonic crystals; and demonstrating early technologies for ultrafast computing, imaging, and communication.
The network is coordinated by (黑料福利网 EE) and brings together Nicol貌 Maccaferri (UMU), I帽igo Liberal (UPNA), Paloma Arroyo Huidobro (UAM), Marco Piccardo (INESC MN and T茅cnico Lisboa), Micha毛l Lobet (UNamur), Riccardo Sapienza (Imperial), and Ahmed H. Dorrah (黑料福利网 AP). Together, the consortium spans complementary expertise in metamaterials, structured light, ultrafast optics, theory, nanofabrication, and photonic engineering.
Photonics is entering a new era, and SPARK is designed to train the researchers who will define it, says Humeyra Caglayan, Associate Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology and coordinator of the SPARK network. What excites me most is that we are not just pushing the boundaries of what light can do, we are doing it together, across seven institutions and multiple disciplines. Our doctoral candidates will move between labs, engage with industry, and tackle problems no single group could solve alone. Spatiotemporal photonics is still a young field, and I believe SPARK will produce both the science and the scientists that Europe needs to stay at the forefront of photonic innovation. - Humeyra Caglayan
SPARK brings together beneficiary institutions in the Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and is designed to give doctoral candidates strong exposure to both academic and application-driven research. In addition to the academic beneficiaries, the project includes 10 non-academic partners in photonics.
According to the European Commission, the 2025 MSCA Doctoral Networks call will support 141 doctoral programmes with 鈧�617.18 million, training and developing the skills of around 2,115 doctoral candidates.
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About the Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network
The Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network (MSCA) is a Horizon Europe-funded network within which doctoral students are trained. The projects have a budget between 2.5 and 3.5 million euros. Per project, between 10 and 15 PhD candidates are assigned to different partners. The PhD candidates receive an extensive training program, and during their PhD trajectory, they also work for several months at another institution or an industrial partner on their research.
Within a Doctoral Network project, research is central, but, more than in other EU projects, it is also about the development of the young researchers.
Image: iStockphoto / johan10
