Spotlight On: Simon Andrews

Name: Simon Andrews
Job title: Executive Director
Company or organisation: Fraunhofer UK Research Ltd and Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics

How long have you worked for Fraunhofer?

Since we started in March 2012 - 13 years.

What brought you to your current role?

I am a local who has worked most of my life in Glasgow city centre, enjoying the happy coincidence that my home city happens to be a very successful place to work in photonics. 

What area or neighbourhood of Glasgow is your business located in?

We are in Glasgow City Innovation District, with labs and offices in Strathclyde’s Technology and Innovation Centre as well as a floor in the Inovo building right next door.

Minister Richard Lochead and Strathclyde Principal Prof Stephen McArthur enjoying a lab tour at the opening of the Inovo labs August 2025, with Dr Charikleia Troullinou.

What is the most satisfying thing about your job?

Doing very applied R&D projects for industrial customers/collaborators(laser, optics, photonics, quantum) takes us into a wide range of challenging sectors, from security, pharma, agritech, space and quantum tech. That makes work here very varied and very exciting. It is ‘excellent science, usefully applied’, so our projects often culminate in a cutting edge optical system being tested in the field.  This gives companies the confidence to take the next step to put our innovations into production and onto the market.

What's the hot topic in your sector?

The hot topic is quantum technology, but for us and our customers, that is almost all dependent on precision photonics, and that is the core of our offering, our deep expertise.  Glasgow is a hugely important part of the UK quantum technology sector, with Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities involved in almost all the academic hubs, with Centre for doctoral training and ourselves working with more QT partners in the UK than anyone else. 

What is the future vision for your organisation in Glasgow?

The photonics and quantum sectors in Scotland and the UK are excellent, ambitious and growing, not least here in Glasgow. As a not-for-profit Research and Technology Organisation, we will enjoy helping that ambition to innovate. 

We have been receiving some core support from Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise, but our impact goes across the UK so we are very pleased to have the UK Government announce, last week,  a further £8million to help us help industry.  

Why Glasgow?

Being in Glasgow is no coincidence.  We are here because of the excellent science in the Institute of Photonics at the University of Strathclyde, our key partner along with Fraunhofer Germany and Scottish Government.  But we collaborate very widely, that is also part of the model we operate.

Working in Glasgow allows us to attract great people, work locally with a strong cluster, and did I mention the people, the talent in photonics here is tremendous.

Glasgow is the Goldilocks city, small enough to be very friendly and navigable, but large enough to have a thriving cultural base in sport, opera, museums, international events, etc. 

What are your experiences with business support in Glasgow?

We are working with Scottish Development International and Invest Glasgow to deal with companies particularly in lasers, photonics, quantum and space who want to locate here because of the clusters, because of the talent pool.  I have been very impressed indeed because they don’t ned to ‘sell’,  they can confidently show the facts which are very compelling. Glasgow is a very attractive place of deep technology companies, and has the warmest of welcomes.

If you want to know more about Fraunhofer's work in Glasgow then check out the website. You can also follow Simon Andrews on LinkedIn.