Collaborations

In Glasgow, Scotland, M Squared Lasers Ltd. has launched a research partnership with Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics to improve environmental monitoring of waste gas emissions. Their project, Synoposis, will focus on how lasers can be used to more easily detect a broader range of potentially hazardous emissions from landfill sites, chemical processes and industrial plants. The project is co-funded by the Technology Strategy Board.

Optical instrumentation maker Bodkin Design & Engineering LLC of Newton, Mass., is collaborating with Boston Children’s Hospital to develop an optical sensor that measures dehydration in infants. The company is working with Dr. Vassilios Bezzerides, who invented an electronic device to measure such dehydration. Funding was provided by CIMIT (Center for Integration of Medicine & Innovative Technology), a nonprofit consortium of Boston teaching hospitals and universities, to develop a beta prototype for clinical trials.

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE of Freiburg, Germany, and equipment supplier EV Group of St. Florian, Austria, have partnered to enable direct semiconductor wafer bonding. As a result of the collaboration, multijunction solar cells with conversion efficiencies approaching 50 percent could become cost-effective.

Multijunction concentrator solar cells on a 4-in.-diameter wafer.

Northrop Grumman Corp. of Falls Church, Va., and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque sponsored a student design project aimed at developing algorithms to correct optical distortions at two large mirror telescopes. The project, titled Adaptive Optics, gave electrical and computer engineering students at the university hands-on experience modeling and writing matrix laboratory code to correct distortions of the telescopes at the Starfire Optical Range in Albuquerque and the Maui Space Surveillance Center in Haleakala, Hawaii, both of which are used to observe dim objects in space from the ground. The students were mentored by Northrop Grumman engineers.