Emmanuel Sabonnadière is the CEO of CEA-Leti, a research institute for electronics and information technologies, based in Grenoble, France. During the recent Photonics West conference in San Francisco, Sabonnadière and his colleagues hosted an event to showcase the institute’s latest developments in microelectronics and nanotechnology. Before the event, Physics World caught up with Sabonnadière to find out about the challenges of integrating photonics and electronics, and to get his opinion on trends such as artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.