Breault names Perkins as CEO
Industry veteran Kathleen Perkins has been promoted to CEO of Breault Research Organization (Tucson, AZ), taking over the helm of the company from founder and president Robert Breault. Perkins, who was vice president of sales and marketing at Breault, has been very active in the optics industry and currently serves on the Arizona Optics Industry Board. Breault will focus on strategic business opportunities for the company and continue his international cluster development activities.
Zygo wins another NIF contract at LNLL
Zygo (Middlefield, CT) has received another contract award from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; Livermore, CA), this time for 94 precision optomechanical assemblies to be installed in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) being constructed at LLNL for the study of nuclear weapons physics and energy production by controlled thermonuclear fusion. The contract has a potential value of $8.6 million. The work will be performed at Zygo's Optical Assembly Center in Tucson, AZ, with optical components supplied by Zygo's Optical Manufacturing Center in Middlefield. This is the second contract awarded to Zygo by LLNL in the past year for opto-mechanical assemblies. Earlier this year, Zygo was awarded a contract for 192 vacuum relay telescopes with a potential value of $7.66 million.
Wells Research partners with Thorlabs
Wells Research and Development (Lincoln, MA), a developer of optical measurement and alignment instrumentation, has entered into a strategic partnership with Thorlabs, a manufacturer of optical products for the commercial and research marketplaces. Together, the two companies will launch the new OpticStudio lens testing system designed to quickly assess the performance of a wide range of lenses. OpticStudio will be manufactured by Thorlabs and marketed through the company's 450-page catalog of optics and opto-mechanical equipment
Osram takes back sales efforts
Osram Opto Semiconductors (San Jose, CA) has assumed all worldwide sales activities for its opto-semiconductor products from Infineon Technologies AG, its former joint venture partner. As a result, the wholly owned Osram German subsidiary is strengthening its customer focus and technical services. With its new sales structure, Osram Opto Semiconductors says it is responding to growing demands for high-quality applications, engineering, and technical services. Optosemiconductors are an enormous strategic product area for Osram, one of the three largest lighting manufacturers in the world, because of the strong growth potential in the medium term, with light-emitting diodes rapidly addressing more and more traditional applications areas.
Edmund Optics chief named AIA president
John Stack, president and COO of Edmund Industrial Optics (Barrington, NJ), has been named president of the Automated Imaging Association for 2003–2004. John was elected by his fellow members of the AIA Board of Directors to succeed Mike Kelley. Stack has been with Edmund for more than 13 years and has held several positions, including applications engineer, optical design engineer, vice president of engineering, and executive vice president.
Special Optics wins SBIR lens contract
Special Optics (Wharton, NJ) has won a Phase I SBIR contract from the U.S Army to design and build a motorized zoom lens for long-range missile imaging. Leading the program is J. Michael Finlan, business development manager. As part of its ongoing expansion, Special Optics doubled its manufacturing space to 20,000 sq ft. Since 1965, Special Optics has been manufacturing optical components and multielement optical systems for medical, military, industrial, and semiconductor applications.
Also in the news . . .
Corona Optical Systems (Lombard, IL), a provider of parallel optical modules, raised $7.5 million in its Series B round of funding. . . . Edmund Optics (Barrington, NJ) has opened a new sales/customer service/technical support center that will function as a division of Edmund Optics Singapore and be located in the existing Edmund Optics manufacturing facility in Singapore. . . . Corning IntelliSense (Wilmington, MA) has been chosen to manufacture MOEMS devices by a consortium led by Xerox. The consortium is part of a $14 million, five-year NIST Advanced Technology Program formed in 1998 to develop a low-cost process for efficient manufacture and rapid commercialization of MOEMS for use in telecommunications, imaging, medicine, entertainment, and information systems.