Melles Griot Optics Group announced it recently commissioned installation of its QED Q22-Y magnetorheological (MRF) finishing system and large-aperture, digital phase-measuring interferometer at its Rochester, N.Y., manufacturing complex, in a new class-10,000 clean facility. The company said the system will enable it to produce spherical surfaces accurate to 1/250 of a wavelength, root-mean-square (rms), at 632 nm, using the "3-sphere" calibration method. The system uses a computer-directed, electromagnetically controlled "ferro-fluid" polishing method to selectively reduce the height of nanometer-scale surface features on optical elements, reducing rms surface roughness to the 5-angstrom region.. . . Physicist Greg Boebinger of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has been named director of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which generates intense magnetic fields for research in a wide variety of disciplines, including physics, biology, bioengineering, chemistry, geochemistry, biochemistry, materials science and engineering. The facility is operated by a consortium among the University of Florida, Florida State University and the Los Alamos lab and is funded by the National Science Foundation and the state of Florida. Boebinger previously was director of the pulsed magnet facility at Los Alamos; he succeeds Jack Crow, who was director of the NHMFL since it opened in 1990.. . .Michael S. Barnes and Matthew B. Bigge have joined Palo Alto, Calif.-based Nanosys Inc. as vice president of technology development systems and director of corporate development, respectively. Nanosys, which develops inorganic semiconductor systems powered by nanotechnology, said they will aid its transition from nanotechnology R&D to manufactured products. Barnes was formerly vice president of engineering and CTO for Applied Materials' Etch Product Business Group; Bigge was COO and a co-founder of Milcom Technologies. Nanosys said it is reinforcing its business and manufacturing capabilities following a series of recent deals with companies including Intel, Matsushita Electric Works and SAIC.