Barrington, NJ - Optical components maker Edmund Optics' CEO and chairman, Robert Edmund, was named a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year 2012 program in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Focal Point and Piezosystem Jena, autofocus systems and nanopositioning solutions makers, respectively, have entered into a new partnership to deliver autofocus systems for biological imaging applications.

Since first opening in 2006, LASER World of Photonics China has established itself as the leading lasers and optics tradeshow in China.

Mountain View, CA--Optoelectronics software provider Synopsys completed the acquisition of photonics design and simulation software company RSoft Design Group, extending its optical solutions offering.

Nanoparticle charaterization technology developer NanoSight (Salisbury, England) has been selected to receive the Queen's Award for Enterprise in the category for International Trade 2012.

Fitchburg, MA--High Efficiency Hyperspec SWIR sensors from Headwall Photonics were selected for airborne applications by the U.S. Navy.

Glasgow, Scotland--The UK-based Business Growth Fund has invested £3.85 million of capital in M Squared Lasers, taking a minority stake in the company and joining the board of directors.

Washington, DC--NASA awarded $3 million to Space System/Loral to host a space laser communications relay demonstration terminal payload aboard a Loral commercial satellite.

Plymouth, MN--Vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) specialist Vixar raised $2.5M in Series B financing from Phoenix Venture Partners (PVP) to commercialize its VCSEL technology.

San Jose, CA--NeoPhotonics Corporation received a $39.8 million dollar investment from RUSNANO and plans to use a portion of the proceeds to establish design and production capabilities in Russia by mid 2014.

San Jose, CA--Machine vision camera maker JAI has acquired TVI Vision, a color line-scan camera manufacturer.