Daily News Briefs

Photonic Products Ltd., a UK-based provider of electro-optic components and laser diodes, has opened a European sales office in Grobenzell, near Munich, in Germany. Dieter Gebhardt, who has worked since 1986 for optoelectronics companies throughout Europe and specializes in industrial laser diodes and optics, is manager of the new operation. The company said the new office will help meet demand subsequent to its extended agreement with Sanyo Semiconductor Europe to distribute Sanyo's laser diode products in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. . . . Juan L. Rayces, of J.L. Rayces Consulting Inc., in Tucson, Ariz., is the recipient of the 2004 A.E. Conrady Award from The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) for his contributions to lens design, analysis and optimization methods. Prior to founding his own consulting company in 1983, he was the chief optical designer at Perkin-Elmer Corp. In 1960, while at Perkin-Elmer, he developed a numerical convolution method for the computation of optical transfer functions, which he used to write the first computer program in the US used to evaluate lens systems in the design stage. In 1970, he developed the optical design program Eikonal, which was the first lens design program in the US to trace rays through holograms and the first to use Zernike coefficients for optimization.