POPsud (Pôle Optique et Photonique sud), an association founded in 2000 at the initiative of industry and research organisations, is today a community with almost 180 members, focused on industrial development, research and higher education in optics, photonics and image processing in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region and more broadly throughout the south of France.

POPsud is responsible for the governance of the OPTITEC Competitivity Cluster.

The main missions of POPsud and the OPTITEC Cluster are:

• -  Organising an optics-photonics community and offering members a range of tool and services tailored to their needs: conferences, trade fairs, trade missions, directories, business intelligence, networking support, and so on.
• -  Partnering and supporting a dynamic of innovative projects, in particular by awarding labels to joint R&D projects
• -  Developing structure-building projects, in particular based on technology platforms and pooled facilities
• - Achieving a lead position at European level, by playing a role in European programmes and European collaborative projects
• - Developing a strategy of focused alliances at international level