The infrastructure of the group includes clean room facilities for in-house fabrication of components as well as a variety of CAD-tools and measurement labs. The group is associated with the micro-electronics research center IMEC in Leuven and uses the CMOS-oriented research facilities of IMEC for research on Silicon photonics.

The Group has a research staff of about 60 people with a mixture of electrical engineering and applied physics profiles. The senior academic staff consists of the professors Roel Baets, Peter Bienstman, Wim Bogaerts, Geert Morthier, Gunther Roelkens and Dries Van Thourhout.

The group is involved in various national and international projects and research grants.  At this moment the group acts as coordinator for the following international projects: the Support Action PhotonFAB, in support of the Silicon Photonics Platform ePIXfab and several research projects such as HISTORIC, WaDiMos & SmartFiber.

Furthermore the group also coordinates the international European (Erasmus Mundus) Master of Science in Photonics.

Prof. Roel Baets received a prestigious ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grant for the InSpectra project and Methusalem funding of the Flemish government for 'Smart Photonic Chips'. Prof. Peter Bienstman (NARESCO), prof. Dries Van Thourhout (ULPPIC) & prof. Gunther Roelkens (MIRACLE) all received a prestigious ERC Starting Grant.

Photonics Research Group is member of the UGent Plateau Photonics Innovation Center and of the UGent multidisciplinary research platform: Center for Nano- and Biophotonics.