Photonics Firms & Faces, 6/30/99
A roundup of personnel changes, company relocations, patents, and other items of interest in the photonics industry.
Corning Inc. (Corning, NY) has appointed Romeo Mercado as head of Corning OCA West, responsible for leading that organization's development and engineering efforts. Mercado will also head OCA's Space Optics Strategic Business unit. Prior to joining Corning OCA Mercado was vice president of optical design and research for Nikon Research Corp. of America…
SensorPhysics (Oldsmar, FL) has donated LaserWave software packages to the Physics Department at the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL) and the Colorado Advanced Photonics Technology Center (Denver, CO). The software will allow the institutions to upgrade their spectrometers for use as wavemeters…
The board of directors of Light Management Group Inc. (Burlington, Ontario) have named Donald Iwacha to the position of president, effective July 15, 1999. Light Management specializes in various areas of photonics, including projection displays, telecommunications, and biomedical…
Rockwell (Costa Mesa, CA) has appointed Derek Cheung as vice president of research and director of the Rockwell Science Center. He succeeds Joe Longo, who announced plans to retire early next year…
Optical instrumentation manufacturer Sokkia Co. (Tokyo, Japan) and global positioning system specialist NovAtel Inc. (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) have formed a jointly-owned subsidiary to manufacture measurement solutions for the fields of surveying, mapping, geographical information systems (GIS), construction and machine control…
Scanner and printer manufacturer Scan-Optics Inc. (Manchester, CT) has completed the acquisition of the product rights and certain assets of the Photomatrix Imaging Corp. (Carlsbad, CA) subsidiary of Photomatrix Inc. (Carlsbad, CA), including the assets of the U.K. subsidiary, Photomatrix Ltd, for $1.9 in cash. The company plans to relocate the Photomatrix operations to Manchester, CT, and will retain certain employees...
TecOptics has signed on as US distributor for Laser Quantum (Manchester, UK)…
Ortel Corp. (Alhambra, CA) has named Stephen Rizzone to the position of chairman, president and CEO. As chairman, Rizzone succeeds Amnon Yariv, a co-founder of the company, who will remain on the board of directors. He also succeeds former president and CEO Wim Selders, who announced in February his planned retirement…
Galileo Corp. (Sturbridge, MA) has named Ralf Faber to the position of president and CEO of subsidiary Optical Filter Corp. (OFC), to replace retiring head John Blais Jr. Faber was previously with Leybold Systems (Hanau, Germany)…
Duff & Phelps Credit Rating Co. (DCR) has raised its evaluation of Optical Coating Laboratory Inc. (Santa Rosa, CA) to BBB+; the rating outlook is positive…
The board of directors of Elbit Systems Ltd. (Haifa, Israel) has authorized company management to enter into negotiations with Israeli defense company Elop Electro-Optics Industries Ltd. and its shareholders regarding a possible statutory merger, under Israeli law, of Elop into Elbit Systems. The merger would result in the issuance of ordinary shares of Elbit Systems to Elop's current shareholders…
Thermo Instrument Systems (Waltham, MA) subsidiary Thermo Vision Corp. (Franklin, MA) president and CEO Kristine Stotz Langdon has announced her resignation. Roger Herd, who oversees the materials science businesses of Thermo Instrument subsidiary Thermo Optek Corp. (Waltham, MA), another Thermo Instrument Systems subsidiary, will serve as interim president…
The US Small Business Administration (SBA) has named Composite Optics Inc. (COI; San Diego, CA) 1999 National Small Business Subcontractor of the Year, out of a field of 560 possible candidates. COI produces optics formed on composite substrates, primarily for space-based applications.