With its project OPTITEC, focused on the monitoring of leading edge technology, and the Complex Optical and Imaging Systems Competivitity Cluster (Pôle de Compétitivité) label, POPsud is well placed to make the South of France into a pole of attraction for photonics and optics at European scale.

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POPsud
POPsud (Pôle Optique et Photonique sud), a non-profit organisation set up in 2000 at the initiative of industry and researchers, is today a community of more than 138 highly committed members, who play key roles in industrial development, research and higher education in optics,photonics and image processing. It is a network that lives, communicates and works to promote a field of expertise, photonics, in the South of France, with the aim of raising it to the first rank at national and European scale.
POPsud also represents years of experience in providing pooled technological tools for the benefit of companies and laboratories, shared platforms that provide a bridge between fundamental research and industry. Finally, POPsud represents the emergence of leading-edge structure-building projects such as the European project OPTITEC that is based on the ‘Complex Optical and Imaging Systems’Competivity Cluster.
The aim of POPsud is to valorise and develop photonics in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
(PACA) Region,and more broadly throughout the South of France
POPsud’s mission is four-fold:
to federate within a community academic and industry stakeholders in the field of optics and photonics ;
to develop synergy in R&D projects, bringing together academics and people from industry ;
to develop a major European scale project that will help to structure the development of optics - photonics in the South of France ;
to position the regional optics - photonics sector at European and international level

A major structure-building project : OPTITEC
The OPTITEC project, the purpose of which is to constitute a European centre for leadingedge technology monitoring, benefits from the label Complex Optical and Imaging
Systems Competivity Cluster, awarded in July 2005. The project is the fruit of the joint efforts of all the members of POPsud and stakeholders in industry, research and higher education. Its purpose is to increase the pool of available expertise and to promote photonics-related activities in the PACA region, by developing an internationally recognised centre. The OPTITEC regional network is based on a region-wide multi-site pool of expertise (Sophia-Antipolis, Toulon, Marseille), with its centre at the Technopôle de Marseille - Provence (Marseille - Provence science park). The aim of the project is to develop :
Platforms for large-scale facilities, based on key projects
a business centre,Technoptic
a centre for higher and specialised education and training
a resource centre

The optics and photonics cluster is based on leading edge research and a dynamic industry that make use of optical and imaging technologies, in eight major industrial sectors, including three that are linked to work in hostile environments :
Space : astronomy, aerospace and observation (focal instruments for large telescopes and parts for observation telescopes)
Energy : the ITER project and associated optical and photonic diagnostic technologies (imaging, measurement, instrumentation)
Sea : sub-sea imaging (image processing,processing, digital cameras, LED lighting)
Medical : biophotonics, medical imaging (Cérimed project),
Microelectronics : optical methods for characterisation, ellipsometry, light diffusion ; control of surface
Telecommunications : optical thin film coating, MOEMS
Environment : observation of the Earth, teledetection,image processing
Industrial processes: metrology, imaging, detection and surveillance by optical methods, treatment of surfaces