Lumera Corp. Announces Management Change, DARPA Contract

Lumera Corp. of Bothell, Wash., announced that Robert Petcavich, senior vice president and chief technology officer., has left the company to pursue other business interests. Earlier this year, Lumera reorganized into two operational business units, placing technology development under the direction of the business unit heads. Lumera designs proprietary molecular structures and polymer compounds for the bioscience and communications/computing industries and has developed proprietary processes for fabricating such devices. Last week, Lumera announced it was awarded a $3.45 million contract to build electro-optic polymer modulators for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ; it will be followed by a $2.43 million contract for a total of $5.8 million. The two-year project involves developing materials and processing them into devices for use in defense applications including terrestrial and satellite radio-frequency photonic links and phased-array radar. The devices will be manufactured by integrating electro-optic polymers into novel device designs to reduce drive voltage and optical loss, enabling enable defense applications that are impractical with currently available optical modulator technologies, Lumera said.