Monroe Community College received a $5.1 million grant from the Department of Defense’s Manufacturing Engineering Education Program (MEEP) to fund its optics and photonics associate degree programs. The funding is part of $53 million recently distributed by the National Defense Education Program to 13 organizations. This is the second time Monroe has been awarded funding through the MEEP program, as the nation’s first community college to administer associate degrees in precision optics. The collaboration will use ASMPT’s hardware and Teramount’s optical elements. Courtesy of Teramount. REGENSBURG, Germany — ASMPT AMICRA, a supplier of ultrahigh-precision die attach equipment, and Teramount Ltd., a developer of scalable fiber connectivity to chips, will collaborate to develop solutions to connect fibers to silicon photonic chips to address bandwidth demands in datacom and telecom applications. The collaboration will use ASMPT AMICRA’s precision die attach machinery to place Teramount’s wafer-level self-aligning optical elements onto customers’ silicon photonics wafers. The MantiSpectra team. Courtesy of MantiSpectra. EINDHOVEN, Netherlands — Deep-tech company MantiSpectra, a spinoff of Eindhoven University of Technology, secured €4 million ($4.2 million) to support commercialization of its on-chip near-infrared spectroscopy technology, ChipSense. MantiSpectra plans to accelerate the scale-up of its fabrication phase, increase production capacity to support high-volume application cases, and develop database libraries for turn-key solutions. Funding was led by Innovation Industries and PhotonVentures with support from the PhotonDelta National Growth Fund. PITTSBURGH — Coherent Corp. and Kinetic by Windstream, a provider of fiber-based connectivity, extended their partnership to enable 100G services at the edge of the network by leveraging a 100G QSFP28 0 dBm digital coherent optics transceiver. Prior to the extension, Coherent and Kinetic’s partnership detailed the enabling of 400G services through optical transceivers. SAN JOSE, Calif. — Open optical networking solutions supplier Infinera and optical fibers, cables, and components manufacturer Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. completed their first demonstration delivering high-speed business services over Sumitomo’s passive optical network infrastructure with Infinera’s ICE-X intelligent coherent pluggable optics. The test was conducted in Osaka using Sumitomo’s FSU 7100 10G-EPON OLT and FTU 9100 metro/access aggregation switch, which hosted Infinera’s ICE-X 100G and 400G coherent pluggable transceivers. ORLANDO, Fla. — Lockheed Martin chose LightPath Technologies’ subsidiary Visimid Technologies to develop a new electro-optical infrared solution as part of a project to produce a design for a major defense program for the U.S. Army. Visimid will receive up to $7.5 million for design and development in several stages over the next three years. Should the program move into production, a decision expected by 2028, LightPath is expected to deliver the complete subsystem and receive follow-on production orders for the duration of the program’s lifetime. Lenses with PPG HI-GARD lens coatings. Courtesy of PPG. PITTSBURGH — Paints, coatings, and specialty materials supplier PPG has entered into an exclusive supplier agreement with developer of digital manufacturing technology Flo for the application of PPG HI-GARD scratch-resistant coatings using Flo’s proprietary digital printing technology. The agreement will enable digitally applied lens coating through additive manufacturing, allowing ophthalmic labs to apply coatings to lenses with precision for a customizable production method. NAGOYA, Japan — Nagoya University startup Photo electron Soul Inc. raised ¥730 million ($4.8 million), led by Ushio Inc. The startup also concluded a sole-distributor agreement with Ushio for Photo’s semiconductor photocathode e-beam generation systems incorporated into e-beam semiconductor wafer pattern inspection tools. Incorporation of the e-beam system into semiconductor inspection tools allows throughput enhancement by 10 times or more compared with existing e-beam systems; noncontact testing of transistors by selective radiation of an e-beam; and detection of particles hidden at the bottom of a deep hole with the aspect ratio of 30 or more by instant control of the beam dose. Vuzix’s waveguide manufacturing facility. Courtesy of Vuzix Corp. ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Vuzix Corp., a supplier of smart glasses and augmented reality technology, certified and commenced sampling waveguides for both in-house and OEM programs at its newly established manufacturing facility. The facility encompasses 12,000 sq ft of primarily class 1K and class 10K cleanrooms, and is located adjacent to the company’s headquarters. The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Centre of Excellence. From left: biochemistry department head Francis Barr, micron bioimaging lead Lothar S., micron facility manager Deirdre Kavanaugh, senior vice president of global commercial operations at Leica Darin Stell, and micron assistant facility manager Niloufer Irani. Courtesy of Leica Microsystems. WETZLAR, Germany — Microscopes and scientific instruments developer Leica Microsystems will collaborate with the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford to create a Centre of Excellence for the fields of optical and superresolution microscopy, artificial intelligence, correlative microscopy, and EM specimen preparation. The Centre of Excellence will be hosted by the Micron Bioimaging Facility within the Department of Biochemistry, which will include Leica’s STELLARIS 5 confocal microscope platform and Mica Microhub.