Daily News Briefs

Irvine Sensors Corp., of Costa Mesa, Calif., announced that Chris Toffales has been elected to serve as a new board member. Toffales is vice chairman of Communications Power Industries, a maker of military and commercial electronic products, and president of Toffales and Associates, a corporate advisory organization that assists defense and electronics companies in strategic development and mergers and acquisitions. Previously, he was an executive at DRS Technologies and Lockheed Martin Fairchild Systems. Irvine Sensors makes stacked chip assemblies, infrared cameras and application-specific electronics. It also conducts research and development in high-density electronics, miniaturized sensors, optical interconnection technology, high-speed routers, image processing and low-power analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. . . . KLA-Tencor, a San Jose, Calif., maker of semiconductor production equipment, and SII NanoTechnology, a subsidiary of Seiko Instruments, announced today they have formed a partnership to distribute SIINT's Nanopics 2100 high-speed, high-resolution atomic force profilometer outside of Japan. Under the agreement, KLA-Tencor will sell the Nanopics 2100 as a joint product in North America and Europe. The tabletop surface metrology system is used to make absolute measurements of surface roughness, step height and surface contour in industries including data storage, semiconductor and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and in polymer science, optics, biotechnology and general industrial research. . . . Lasertel Inc., a Tucson, Ariz., supplier of active optical components, announced that its engineering manager, Robert Walker, has been named sales and marketing manager. Walker has more than eight years of experience in the optoelectronics industry. Before joining Lasertel in 2000, he was engineering program manager at Marlow Industries.