Daily News Briefs

Rockwell Scientific Co. LLC scientists James Garnett, Markus Loose and Majid Zandian, along with team members from the University of Hawaii, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute, received the Space Act Award from the NASA Inventions and Contributions Board for developing an extremely sensitive, large-format infrared detector array technology for astronomy for the NASA Ames Research Center. The innovation has dramatically improved focal plane arrays in the 0.6 to 5 micrometer region of the infrared, said Rockwell, which will design and develop this technology for the near-infrared camera (NIRCam) instrument of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. . . . Silke Pflueger has been named North America sales director for Southampton Photonics Inc. (SPI), a Southampton, England, maker of disruptive technology laser products in the mWs to kWs range for the industrial, aerospace and communications markets. Pflueger has held various engineering and marketing positions in SDI's fiber laser group. After SDI merged with JDS Uniphase, she was product line manager for JDS Uniphase's commercial diode products. She will lead SPI's North America industrial fiber laser sales efforts.