Daily News Briefs

Spectra-Physics announced that Jim Harrison, Phd, has joined the company as director of engineering for its diode lasers group, located in Tucson, Ariz. He will be in charge of research, product development and sustaining engineering for the company's entire diode laser product family, including single emitters, bars and multibar modules. Harrison has over 15 years experience in the design of semiconductor and solid-state laser systems, and was most recently vice-president of engineering for Coherent's semiconductor laser group. Stuart MacCormack, Phd, has joined Spectra-Physics as senior laser engineer in the industrial and scientific lasers group in Mountain View, Calif. His primary responsibility will be product development in the area of fiber lasers. He was previously staff scientist at JDS Uniphase, managing Raman and optical amplifier development programs.. . .NanoInk Inc. announced it has received the first award of a two-phase $1.3 million Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health. The grant was awarded to support the development of NanoInk's patented dip pen nanolithography (DPN) technology for ultraminiaturization of DNA arrays.. . . The National Program for Smart Materials (NPSM) in India announced it has selected Coventor Inc.'s CoventorWare software for its microelctromechanical (MEMS) initiative program. NPSM is a consortium of labs, including the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), working on developing MEMS devices. NPSM will install the software at IIT locations in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Kharagapur to assist in creating MEMS design centers for post-graduate and other research in magnetic, electromechanical and optical sensors and microfluidic applications.