Olof Sahlen, PhD, has joined Comlase (Stockholm, Sweden) as vice president of engineering. He will direct development of the company's high-volume Nitrel process reactor. Comlase's Nitrel technology enables manufacturers of semiconductor lasers to increase the manufacturing yield, performance and reliability of a product by eliminating facet oxidation and related failure or degradation mechanisms. Sahlen has more than 20 years of experience in developing photonic components and telecommunications systems. His previous positions included vice president of engineering at Optillion, manager of laser development at Ericsson Microelectronics, senior scientist at Ericsson Fiber Optics Research Centre and scientist at the Institute of Optical Research, Stockholm. Sahlen received a PhD in physics from the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, where he is an associate professor. . . . Schott AG's fiber optics unit and Zett Optics GmbH have announced a joint venture to develop fiber optic light sources and light source modules for a variety of applications. Schott will be responsible for flexible fiber optic light guiding and application, and Zett will be responsible for selecting a light source to integrate into the fibers. Work will be performed at Zett Optics, in Braunschweig, Germany, and the resulting products will marketed under the Schott brand name. Schott's fiber optics business unit, based in Mainz, makes products such as fibers for the illumination of operating microscopes and endoscopes, flexible coherent fibre optics and light guides, fiber optic tapers and fiber optic faceplates for image transfer in medical x-ray machines, light-guiding fibre optic rods and tapers and laser beam guide systems. Zett is a developer of light, LED and medical technology and plastic optics, including light sources for microscopy and medical applications that use halogen incandescent lamps, discharge lamps and LEDs. In a previous join venture, the companies developed cold light sources for microscopy. . . . Spectro Analytic Instruments GmbH, a provider of optical emission and x-ray fluoroscopy (XRF) spectrometers, announced it has chosen optical components maker Berliner Glas as its strategic partner to manufacture precision quality diffraction gratings for Spectro's line of analytical instruments. Berliner has supplied various glass and optical components for Spectro instruments for more than 20 years. Under the new exclusive collaboration, it will provide specialized holographic diffraction gratings for use in Spectro's high-precision laboratory instruments and spectrometers. Diffraction gratings produce a 'super prism' effect, breaking light into its component wavelengths.