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Photonic Products Ltd. has signed an extended agreement with Sanyo Semiconductor Europe to be the exclusive distributor of Sanyo's laser diode products in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Hiroshi Ono, president of SANYO Semiconductor Europe (left), and Tony Pope, managing director, Photonic Products Ltd.

The agreement begins this month and is in addition to a distribution agreement covering the UK and Eire. Photonic Products has been Sanyo Semiconductor Europe's UK laser diode distributor since November 2000. Photonic Products will open a European sales center in Germany. German-speaking staff are also employed at the company's UK headquarters, in Hertfordshire, England. . . . Kristina M. Johnson, PhD, dean of the Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School of Engineering at Duke University, has been elected to the board of Guidant Corp., a developer of cardiovascular medical products. Johnson was previously a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado, where she was co-founder and director of the Optoelectronic Computing Systems Center, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center, and has co-founded several startup companies, including ColorLink Inc., KAJ LLC and STI Inc. Johnson is an expert in liquid crystal electro-optics and has pioneered work in liquid crystal-on-silicon microdisplays. She has 44 patents or patents pending in liquid crystal tunable optical filters, spatial light modulators, color separators, pattern recognition systems and sensors. Most of her research focuses on splitting light into components of color, a key element for high-definition television, projectors and other applications.