On July 12, 2023, Prof. Roel Baets, Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Flanders, Belgium, Founder of ePIXfab, European Silicon Optical Alliance, and Professor of Ghent University-IMEC, Belgium, visited the State Key Laboratory of Regional Optical Fiber Communication Networks and Novel Optical Communication Systems in the School of Electronics, where he had an in-depth and cordial exchange and discussion with members of the group. The visitors also included Erwin De Baetselier, CEO of Luceda, Dr. Ruping Cao, General Manager of Luceda China, and Dr. Wei Chen from eCable Micro.

In the symposium, first Assistant Professor Haowen Shu, as a representative of the PCISIC group, introduced the main representative work of the group, including: silicon-based optoelectronic systems with AlGaAs microcavity optical combs fusion applied to high-speed data communication, microwave photonic filters, optical convolutional computation, chaotic optical comb-based random number generation and parallel LIDAR, silicon-based microwave photonics, two-dimensional material integration, and high-sensitivity particle sensing, etc. Prof. Roel Baets showed great interest in the work of the group and exchanged ideas with the group members. Afterwards, Prof. Roel Baets gave an academic report entitled "Key Trend in Silicon Photonics", which elaborated the current status, trend and bottleneck of the development of silicon-based optoelectronics in five aspects, namely, technology, devices, links, applications and process platforms, and showed the powerful role of silicon-based optoelectronics in the applications of data communication, sensing, interconnection, signal processing, etc. In the past 20 years, the breakthroughs in silicon-based optoelectronics technology from R&D to product realization have been introduced. He introduced the breakthroughs in silicon-based optoelectronics technology from research and development to product realization in the past 20 years, as well as the great impact on our lives. Prof. Roel Baets' report was informative, vivid and in-depth. After the report, members of the conference actively asked questions, and Prof. Roel Baets answered them in detail, and had an in-depth discussion on issues related to microtransfer technology, heterogeneous integration technology, comparison of hybrid integration technology, and landing of silicon-based optoelectronic products. After that, Dr. Ruping Cao introduced the function and use of Luceda IPKISS software. At the end of the agenda, Prof. Roel Baets and his team visited the lab of the group for more detailed and specific exchanges.

Prof. Roel Baets has been involved in the teaching and research of optoelectronics and optical communications for nearly 40 years. He has done extensive research in silicon-based optoelectronics and III-V semiconductor integrated photonics, and has made several scientific contributions to their applications and derivatives in the fields of telecom, datacommunications and sensing. He has led the major research programs in silicon-based optoelectronics in Europe. In 2006, he founded and chaired the world's first academic platform for multi-project wafer services in silicon based photonics, the European Photonics in Silicon Federation (ePIXFab). As a leading figure in silicon-based photonics, the visit of Prof. Roel Baets and his team will also promote the research of the School of Electronics of Peking University in the related direction and further cooperation.