Gilberto Brambilla is a Professor in Photonics at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (University of Southampton, U.K.) and General Manager and Deputy Director of the Future Photonics Hub. He obtained his MSc (Material Engineering) with honours from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and his PhD degree in Optoelectronics from the ORC in 2002. In 2007 he was awarded a Research Fellowship from the Royal Society. He has been the Director of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Photonics until 2015. His research interests include: point fibre sensors; design and fabrication of rare earth doped scintillating fibres; material structuring using fs lasers; manufacture of UV fibre lasers; fabrication of devices based on optical fibre nanowires, fibre tapers and couplers; fabrication of delivery fibres and systems. He has published >300 papers in international scientific journals/conferences, authored 4 patents and gave more than 30 invited/keynote/plenary talks over the 5 continents.