12 May 2009

PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award Goes to BioPhotonic Solutions, Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Lyndsay Meyer
CLEO/IQEC & PhAST
+1.202.416.1435
lmeyer@osa.org

PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award Goes to BioPhotonic Solutions, Inc.

Award-winning femtoFit™ provides breakthrough in performance, price and size

WASHINGTON, May 11—The Photonic Applications, Systems and Technologies (PhAST) Conference and Laser Focus World magazine are pleased to announce that BioPhotonic Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of pulse shapers for ultrafast lasers, has been selected as the recipient of this year’s PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award. The award recognizes the company for the development of femtoFit™, a low-cost, compact, commercial pulse shaper that unlocks the power of ultrafast lasers for industrial, scientific, medical, and defense applications. BioPhotonic Solutions will be accepting this award at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) Plenary Session on Monday, June 1 at 6 p.m. at the Baltimore Convention Center.

“FemtoFit is an impressive product that is 10 times smaller, three times cheaper, twice as fast, and even more accurate than previous industry offerings,” said Gail Overton, PhAST co-chair. “Ultrafast lasers are becoming extremely important in multiple scientific and industrial disciplines. FemtoFit is an innovative tool that eliminates manual laser adjustments, bringing ultrafast technology out of the laboratory and into everyday, practical application.”

FemtoFit will make its debut at PhotonXpo, the exhibit at CLEO, June 2–4 at the Baltimore Convention Center at booth 1232.

A second-generation MIIPS® pulse shaping system, femtoFit is one-tenth the volume of the previous technology and twice the speed during automated pulse characterization. Because of the new optical design and components used, the system can be sold for approximately one-third of the price of its competitors and previous systems. These drastic reductions in price and volume, coupled with an improved software engine and interface, make it accessible to a much wider range of users, which for the first time can include laser manufacturers and manufacturers of instruments that depend on ultrafast lasers, such as two-photon microscopes.

With femtoFit, a large number of femtosecond lasers can be operated remotely at optimum performance. This is critical for industrial applications and is the reason applications for homeland security and biotechnology are being developed using the femtoFit. Applications for the system include those in biomedical imaging, corrective eye surgery, micromachining and processing, metrology, academic research and development, gem marking, dentistry, sensing of Chemical or Biological Warfare Agents (CBWA) and explosives, fusion energy research, cutting of solar panels and LCDs, terahertz sensing, and attosecond science.

“The Innovation Awards are a great opportunity to recognize excellence in the lasers and electro-optics industry,” said Steve Andersen, editor-in-chief, Laser Focus World. “We had a number of strong submissions for this year’s awards and are impressed with the advances PhotonXpo exhibiting companies are making in the field.”

In addition to the award given to BioPhotonic Solutions, four products were chosen as honorable mentions. These honorable mentions are as follows:

• IPG Photonics Corp. – Booth 1217
  YLS-5000-SM, 5 kilowatt Single-Mode Industrial Fiber Laser
  For the introduction of the brightest turnkey fiber laser with near-diffraction-limited beam quality for materials processing and directed energy applications

• Kapteyn-Murnane Laboratories – Booth 1437
  Coherent Soft X-Ray Generation for Lithography and Ultra High-Resolution 3-D Imaging
  For the XUUS tabletop extreme ultraviolet (EUV) source that converts the output of an ultrafast amplifier into the EUV wavelength region for applications in nanoscale science, lithography, 3-D imaging, and molecular dynamics

• Orbits Lightwave, Inc. – Booth 1457
  Slow Light Laser Oscillator
  For the creation of an all-fiber oscillator that uses slow light to achieve extremely narrow linewidth and negligible noise for coherent communications, sensing, and research

• TOPTICA Photonics AG – Booth 1421
  iChrome – Ultra-Wide Tunable Visible Laser for Biophotonic Application and Optical Metrology
  For the development of a user-friendly, widely tunable visible fiber laser for fluorophore excitation and other applications in microscopy and spectroscopy

The honorable mentions will be recognized by the PhAST chairs during the CLEO Plenary Session.

The PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Awards Program honors the most timely, ground-breaking products in the field of laser science. Entries are evaluated on criteria critical to product success: impact, functionality, life expectancy, effect on the optics industry, innovation and patents or trademarks.

For more information on the PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award, visit http://www.phastconference.org/innovation/.

About PhAST
PhAST is dedicated to presenting the latest breakthroughs in Photonic Applications, Systems and Technologies. Photonics has moved out of the laboratory and into the products and services that have changed our daily lives. PhAST is where engineers and applications specialists receive up-to-the-minute information on industry trends and the next wave of applications. PhAST programming takes places over three days and includes technical presentations, panel discussions, a leading exhibit and networking receptions. PhAST is collocated with the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) and The International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC), the premier forum for scientific and technical optics in the world today.

About Laser Focus World
Published since 1965, Laser Focus World is a global media franchise for engineers, researchers, scientists, and technical professionals that provides comprehensive global coverage of optoelectronic and photonic technologies, applications, and markets. The magazine and its related web site (www.laserfocusworld.com) reports on and analyzes the latest developments and trends in technology and business in the worldwide optoelectronic and photonics industry.

About PennWell Corporation
The publisher of Laser Focus World, PennWell Corporation is a diversified business-to-business media and information company that provides quality content and integrated marketing solutions for the following global industries: oil and gas, electric power, water, electronics, semiconductor, contamination control, optoelectronics, fiber optics, computer graphics, enterprise storage, information technology, fire, emergency services and dental. Founded in 1910, PennWell publishes 75 print and online magazines and newsletters, conducts 60 conferences and exhibitions on six continents, and has an extensive offering of books, maps, directories, web sites, research, and database services. In addition to PennWell’s headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the company has offices in Nashua, New Hampshire; Houston, Texas; London, England and other locations worldwide.

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