• Will nurture the emerging photonics industry cluster centered in Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina.
• Will bring together existing and new faculty, including an endowed chair that will allow Clemson to recruit an outstanding, nationally recognized scholar to provide leadership for the center's activities.
• Will help move research from the lab to the marketplace.
• Will recruit and mentor top graduate students, with a focus on domestic scholars.

Photonics research at Clemson is led by Clemson's Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies (COMSET), the only university R&D lab in the region focused on the development of new optical materials. COMSET and Clemson's Arthur M. Spiro Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Spiro Center will support industry growth through partnerships that include:

• The Carolina Micro-Optics Triangle, a research collaboration with UNC-Charlotte and Western Carolina that focuses on photonic materials, metrology and manufacturing.
• An educational collaboration with Tri-County, Greenville and Spartanburg Technical Colleges to ensure that industries have a pool of well-trained technical staff as well as engineers and scientists.
• Partnership with K-12, particularly targeting 8th-12th grades, to cultivate interest in science, especially photonics.
• Alliances with industries to develop photonics networks.