Daily News Briefs

Bookham Inc. announced today that Andrew Rickman has stepped down as chairman and a member of its board after 17 years of service. Rickman founded the company in 1988 and was its CEO until 2001. Peter Bordui will succeed Rickman as chairman of the board. Bordui, who has been a director since 2004, joined the board after Bookham's acquisition of New Focus, of which he was a director from 2001 to 2004. Before joining New Focus, Bordui was vice president and general manager, source lasers, for JDS Uniphase Corp.; he was previously general manager at a Siemens-owned materials and components company. He is active on the boards of a number of technology companies in the US and Europe. At Bookham, he chairs the compensation committee and is a member of the audit committee; he will also join the nominations committee. Bookham also announced that Liam Nagle will join its board and will step down as COO and president in order to spend more time in Ireland, where he lives. Nagle became COO of Bookham upon its acquisition of Nortel Networks Optical Components (NNOC), where he was vice president, operations, in 2002. Jim Haynes will become COO, effective immediately. Haynes, who has been vice president of UK operations since 2004, joined Bookham from Agility, where he was COO; before that, he spent 15 years in various positions at Nortel and STC. . . . The US Army's Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) has ordered $2.8 million worth of products and services from Markland Technologies Inc., a Ridgefield, Conn., defense and homeland security company. Markland is working on technology including night-vision and advanced sensor applications, disposable sensors and other threat-detection systems for the NVESD. The orders are part of an omnibus five-year contract in place with EOIR Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Markland, since July 1, 2004, bringing its current value to approximately $43.9 million; it is potentially worth a total of $406 million. Many of the products and services under this contract use electro-optic and infrared sensor technologies. The NVESD has been responsible for numerous innovations in the fields of optical electronics and thermal imaging for weapons targeting, electronic surveillance and other mission-critical military applications.