Daily News Briefs

Luis Spinelli has been appointed executive vice president and CTO of Coherent Inc. Spinelli has more than 25 years of experience in the photonics industry, including almost 19 years at Coherent. Since October 2002, he has served as vice president for corporate research and as chairman of the company’s technical advisory board. He has been instrumental in developing a number of Coherent’s technologies and products, such as deep ultraviolet frequency-doubled ion lasers for semiconductor manufacturing and telecommunications applications. He is one of the inventors of Kerr lens mode-locking, a widely used technique to generate ultrashort pulses in solid-state lasers. . . .

Pro-Lite's Robert Yeo (left) and Radiant Imaging's president and cofounder, Ron Rykowsky

Pro-Lite Technology LLP, a Cranfield, England-based photonics equipment distributor, announced it has signed a sales distribution agreement with Radiant Imaging Inc., of Duvall, Wash. Pro-Lite will distribute Radiant Imaging's ProMetric CCD imaging photometers and colorimeters in the UK and Ireland. Pro-Lite has also signed an exclusive agreement with Quintessence Photonics Corp., of Sylmar, Calif., to distribute in the UK and Ireland its laser diode arrays and bars used in materials processing, military and DPSS applications. . . . Lowell, Mass.-based Konarka Technologies Inc. announced it has acquired patent assets from Chalmers University of Technology, in Goteborg, Sweden, related to Konarka's photovoltaic nanotechnology products, which provide a source of renewable power for commercial, industrial, government and consumer applications.