ZEISS Expands Dresden Innovation Hub: Week in Brief: 5/10/24

Photonics.com
May 2024REDDING, Calif., May 10, 2024 — DataRay Inc., a laser beam profiling and analysis company, will move its offices to Monterey, Calif. The company said that it believes that the relocation will provide increased business development and growth due to its proximity to Silicon Valley.
The façade of the ZEISS Innovation Hub in Dresden. Courtesy of ZEISS.

The newly opened ZEISS Innovation Hub in Dresden. Courtesy of ZEISS.

DRESDEN, Germany — ZEISS has opened the ZEISS Innovation Hub in Dresden, Germany, located opposite the campus of the Carl Gustav Carus University Hospital in Dresden. The facility has approximately 700 sq m of floor space and modern laboratories that will be shared with teams from ZEISS Microscopy. The main focus of research at the Hub will be on innovation in the life sciences and health sector.

WETZLAR, Germany — Leica Microsystems has added the light sheet technology of Viventis Microscopy to its line of research microscopes. Products in this portfolio include the Viventis LS2 Live, a light sheet fluorescence microscope that provides multi-view and multi-position light sheet imaging. Through the acquisition, Viventis joins the Leica Microsystems Life Sciences Business Unit.

Members of Photonics Foundry and microfab at the deal’s closing. Courtesy of Photonics Foundry.

BREMEN, Germany — Photonics Foundry has added MEMS service provider microfab Service GmbH as a shareholder. microfab cited a common understanding of sustainable service and congruent business models with Photonics Foundry.

SAN FRANCISCO — OPTIX, an XR startup, has closed its oversubscribed Pre-A funding round, bringing the company’s total equity raised to $15 million. The investment is OPTIX's third funding round in the less than two years since the company’s founding in August 2022. The company also recently established its own laboratory and manufacturing process, focusing on optics technologies for both AR and VR.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — High-power and high-brightness industrial blue laser developer NUBURU, Inc. has been awarded an $850,000 Phase II contract by NASA to develop blue laser power transmission technology as a solution to reduce the size and weight of the equipment needed for lunar and Martian applications. The award builds on NUBURU’s Phase I Small Business Innovation Research award in August 2023. The company aims to scale up the power, range, and performance of the blue laser power beaming technology, demonstrating the technology with hundreds of watts of power delivered at kilometer-scale range.

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. — Kubos Semiconductors, a microLED material company, has raised $2 million to accelerate development of its cubic gallium nitride technology, which can double the efficiency of red microLEDs. According to Kubos, the funding brings its total to $5.5 million and will enable the company to enter the microLED display market within three years through intellectual property licensing. The company is targeting applications in AR and VR.

Vice president of imaging at vivo, Yu Meng (left), and head of technology and innovation at Zeiss Consumer Products, Torsten Sievers (right). Courtesy of ZEISS.

OBERKOCHEN, Germany — Smartphone developer vivo has extended its joint R&D collaboration with ZEISS to bring professional imaging standards to smartphones. Entering its fourth year, the collaboration has established the vivo ZEISS Imaging Lab along with vivo devices using ZEISS’ optical design. In the future, the collaboration will explore further areas of application, including health imaging.

A diagram of the long-distance QKD system used to validate the demonstration in Okinawa. Courtesy of PacketLight Networks.

TEL AVIV, Israel — PacketLight Networks, a provider of dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) and optical transport network equipment, has demonstrated quantum key distribution (QKD) over DWDM links with Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation, a provider of QKD technologies and systems. The demonstration showcases the integration of Toshiba's QKD solution with PacketLight's optical transport networking encrypted transport solutions. The team validated the compatibility of quantum communication systems with optical networking infrastructure through a detailed series of evaluations and demonstrated quantum secure data transmission with QKD encryption. The demonstration was led by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology of Japan.

ORLANDO, Fla. — LightPath Technologies has entered into a research partnership with the University of Central Florida (UCF) and Ursinus College. The research, originally funded by LightPath, is now being funded by the U.S. Department of Defense via American Center for Optics Manufacturing (AmeriCOM). Ursinus and UCF recently received a $1.2 million grant from AmeriCOM to further research a process for recycling chalcogenide glass such as BlackDiamond glass produced by LightPath. The study builds on an initial proof of concept funded and executed by LightPath, UCF, and Ursinus in 2022.

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