Webster resident Joseph Serio worked as a gas station attendant in the 1990s, and had no ties to NASA or Mars Rovers. Now he’s a Monroe Community College optics technology student with 20 years of experience manufacturing optics parts for NASA Mars Rovers with Ontario company Optimax. He’s headed to Texas next week to compete...Continue Reading

FluxData’s FD-1665 used in Image Enhancement Of Surface Microstructure On Mucosa For Polarimetric Endoscopy study Katsuhiro Kanamori from Device Research Laboratory Advanced Research Division, Panasonic Corporation in Japan recently concluded their research into endoscopic imaging of gastric mucosa for the purpose of detecting colon cancer. FluxData’s FD-1665 Polarimetric imaging system was used as part of...Continue Reading

A 60-day comment period beginning today is the photonics industry’s opportunity to provide vital input on proposed regulations controlling export of important technologies under Category XII of the U.S. Munitions List, which governs commodities covered by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The proposal has broad implications for the U.S. optics and photonics industry both...Continue Reading

Optimax Systems, based in Rochester, grew from a struggling startup to what CEO Rick Plympton claims is largest optics manufacturer in the United States. Optimax achieves operational excellence by investing in cutting-edge technology, advancing its people, and sharing 25% of monthly profits with employees. Learn more from The Hitachi Foundation’s Good Work Blog: http://bit.ly/1EADgduContinue Reading

Researchers demonstrate how to encode 2.05 bits per photon, doubling existing systems that use light polarization Researchers at the University of Rochester and their collaborators have developed a way to transfer 2.05 bits per photon by using “twisted light.” This remarkable achievement is possible because the researchers used the orbital angular momentum of the photons...Continue Reading

Sydor Instruments announced today that it has been awarded a $150,000 SBIR/STTR Phase I grant from the Department of Energy. Sydor Instruments will use this grant in collaboration with Cornell University to advance the development of a novel fast framing hybridized x-ray imaging detector. The hybridized detector is capable of capturing a sequence of quantitative...Continue Reading

Feb. 6, 2015 — Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) and Exelis, Inc. (NYSE:XLS) today announced a definitive agreement under which Harris will acquire Exelis in a cash and stock transaction valued at $23.75 per share, or an approximately $4.75 billion enterprise value. The agreement has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies. The...Continue Reading

As the economy continues to recover, economists are seeing stark differences between people with high school and college degrees. Four-year college graduates are nearly twice as likely to have a job compared to Americans who just graduated high school and stopped there. But economists say that doesn’t mean everybody needs a four-year degree. In fact,...Continue Reading

It’s tough to get higher tech than the OptiPro Pro 80 GTS. About the size of a phone booth, with a separate arm holding a control panel covered in buttons, dials and a touchscreen, the machine turns discs of glass into specialized, very precise, very expensive optics. One of those computer-controlled grinders — along with...Continue Reading

Slaughter Has Spearheaded Effort to Secure Transformational Federal Investment Since 2012 Optics and Photonics Support 17,000 Jobs in the Rochester Region ROCHESTER, NY – Today, New York’s Rochester-led consortium was named one of three finalists in the country to compete for a significant federal investment in the region’s signature photonics industry, an initiative that Congresswoman...Continue Reading