The Department of Applied Physics and Photonics at the VUB (TONA/TW/VUB) belongs to the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences of our University. It consists of a group of about twenty researchers -engineers and physicists- who are working together on materials, components, devices and subsystems for bringing light into communication and information processing systems.These research themes go from fundamental research to near the market demonstrator systems. The group is also responsible for a successful Photonics curriculum for students in Electrical Engineering. The group is currently involved in thirty important research projects financed by the Flemish government , the Federal Science Foundation , the EC and Industry. The main research themes are : 1. Photonics in Digital Parallel Computing Demonstrators; 2. Micro-Optics for Optical Interconnects; 3. Polarisation in Photonic switching; 4. Organic Materials for Photonics; 5. Photonics in sensing and Nuclear Environments; 6. Holography and Diffractive Optics; 7. Optical Metrology; 8. Biomedical Optics; 9. Photonics and Optics in Education.