Montana State Awarded $26.7M for Quantum Tech; Midel Photonics Secures €1M in Funding: Week in Brief: 12/22/23

Montana State University received a $26.7 million grant from the U.S. Air Force to establish a facility to support moving advanced quantum technology applications in cybersecurity, communications technology, and national defense from concept and testing to market.

Midel Photonics cofounders. (From left) Christian Wahl, David Dung, Christopher Grossert, and Frederik Wolf. Courtesy of Midel Photonics.

BONN, Germany — Laser start-up Midel Photonics secured €1 million ($1.1 million) in seed funding, which the company said will be used to accelerate development and commercialization of its beam-shaping technology. Midel's solution aims to increase the efficiency of existing manufacturing processes and establish new ones. Investors included High-Tech Gründerfonds, executive vice president of Coherent, Thomas Merk, and CEO of duagon, Markus Dilger.

An aerial view of the Argonne facility. Courtesy of the Argonne National Laboratory.

LEMONT, Ill. — The Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science approved $30 million for three projects aimed at integrating high performance computing at DOE X-ray and neutron light source facilities. Five million of that funding will go to an Argonne National Laboratory-led research project called X-ray & Neutron Scientific Center for Optimization, Prediction and Experimentation (XSCOPE). Its focus will be on enhancing data analysis capabilities at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source as the upgraded facility comes online next year.

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. — Kopin Corporation received an approximately $6 million follow-on order for a thermal weapon sight eyepiece subassembly. The solution components are integrated into an augmented reality optical module using Kopin's proprietary high-brightness microdisplay and Pancake optics. The additional increase in demand potentially triples Kopin’s thermal weapon sight production volumes in fiscal year 2024, as compared to 2023, according to the company.

ESPOO, Finland — Nokia completed proof of concept of quantum-safe networks in a complex optical network ring topology across three locations in Greece with HellasQCI, the Greek National Quantum Communication Infrastructure Consortium. Nokia demonstrated hybrid key generation using both classic and quantum physics to generate and distribute quantum-safe keys for encrypted optical services with the goal of running use cases with the HellasQCI consortium members.

BOZEMAN, Mont. — Gas mapping lidar company Bridger Photonics will participate in a research project with lead investigator Colorado State University (CSU) on methane emissions measurement and reporting. Funded through the DOE’s Site-Aerial-Basin Emission Reconciliation (SABER) project, CSU’s Energy Institute will oversee the project and use Bridger’s aerial lidar methane detection technology solution, gas mapping lidar, to collect data to measure emission in the Denver Julesburg Basin and Upper Green River Basin.

KENT, Wash. — PowerLight Technologies, a developer of long-distance wireless power beaming solutions, is under contract with Zeno Power to provide the Department of Defense capabilities that could open the way for long-endurance seafloor sensor systems and charging stations for autonomous undersea vehicles. The companies will provide a proof of concept, and expect to demo the technology by 2025. The technology is to include a PowerLight power-over-fiber system to distribute electricity deep underwater.

(From left) Dimitar Dimitrov, Fan Wu, S. Keith Hargrove, and Akshaya Kumar. Courtesy of SPIE.

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — SPIE and the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center selected a group from Tuskegee University as this year’s recipient of the IBM-SPIE HBCU Faculty Accelerator Award in Quantum Optics and Photonics. The $100,000 award will go to Tuskegee’s physics department head, Akshaya Kumar, physicist Dimitar Dimitrov, computer science department head Fan Wu, and senior vice president for academic affairs S. Keith Hargrove.

Medlogical Innovations founder, Celi Varol, and minister for medical research, David Harris. Courtesy of the government of New South Wales.

SYDNEY — Medlogical Innovations, creator of the ProFocal robotic laser therapy system, received $2.5 million AUD ($1.7 million) from the Office for Health and Medical Research to support the continued improvement of prostate cancer treatment and patient outcomes. The ProFocal system, which was trialed at Nepean Hospital in Kingswood, Australia and now undergoing global clinical investigation, is a needle-guided laser ablation treatment that targets the prostate cancer without removing the whole prostate gland or affecting function of the gland itself.

FREMONT, Calif. — Enablence Technologies, a provider of optical chips, will supply chips to fiberoptic sensing company Opterro, Inc. According to Opterro CEO Mehrdad Moslehi, the partnership aims to drive adoption of the company's modular plug-and-play, end-to-end sensing solutions. The companies previously collaborated to co-develop and integrate Enablence’s arrayed waveguide gratings with Opterro’s sensing technologies.