People In The News

REO of Boulder, Colo., has appointed Patrick Casnedi as its sales representative in France. He has held several senior management roles in the photonics industry at companies ranging from component and module suppliers to systems integrators. Most recently, he was group vice president of sales and marketing at Qioptiq.

Photo courtesy of REO.

John Allen has been named interim chief financial officer of Tessera Technologies Inc. of San Jose, Calif. He replaces C. Richard Neely Jr., whose tenure as executive vice president and CFO ended in June. Allen, who is also the company’s senior vice president and corporate controller, has more than 20 years of financial and managerial experience with high-technology companies.

Dr. Lars Grünert has succeeded Rolf Biekert as president and CEO of Trumpf Inc. of Farmington, Conn. Grünert previously was executive vice president of Trumpf GmbH + Co. KG and CFO of the Laser Technology/Electronics Div. Biekert resigned from Trumpf to lead Maintecx, an exclusive distributor of Trumpf fabricating equipment in the Midwest.

Lars Grünert. Photo courtesy of Trumpf Inc.

ProPhotonix Ltd. of Salem, N.H., has appointed Philip Feeley as acting CFO. He has served as corporate controller since joining the company in 2005. ProPhotonix also announced that Raymond Oglethorpe, lead nonexecutive director, was elected board chairman, and that Mark Weidman was appointed to fill the nonexecutive director vacancy of Dietmar Klenner. Weidman is the president of Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Waste Management Inc.

As it expands into Europe, spectral instrumentation manufacturer Headwall Photonics Inc. of Fitchburg, Mass., has hired Kevin Lynch as European sales manager to support customers and partners in the region. Lynch, an industry professional based out of England, has experience in spectral imaging solutions and reflective spectroscopy.

Photo courtesy of Headwall Photonics Inc.

Intevac Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., has named Wendell Blonigan president and CEO of the company. He replaces CEO and Intevac founder Norman Pond, who will continue as chairman of the board. Blonigan has more than 30 years of senior management and technical experience in semiconductors, flat panel displays and solar capital equipment. He founded Orbotech LT Solar, where he had served as CEO since 2009. He also previously was chief operating officer at Photon Dynamics and president of Applied Materials’ AKT display subsidiary.

Val Moshkovskiy was named senior applications engineer at the Rochester, N.Y.-based G-S Plastic Optics, a unit of the Germanow-Simon Cos. In this role, he will support customers and develop proposals for the design and manufacture of injection-molded polymer optical components. He previously served as senior product manager for Volpi Manufacturing and for Idex Optics & Photonics.

Zygo Corp. of Middlefield, Conn., has elected Michael A. Kaufman as director of its board. Kaufman is president of the New York City-based fund company MAK Capital One LLC, which he founded in 2001. MAK Capital and its related entities have been investors in Zygo since 2007 and currently own approximately 23.6 percent of its outstanding capital stock.

CVI Laser Optics, a unit of Idex Optics & Photonics, has hired Edgar Pigott as value stream manager of coating. He joins CVI’s Albuquerque, N.M., headquarters with more than 20 years of experience in lean manufacturing, most recently as director of operations at Schott Electronic Packaging.

Photo courtesy of Idex Optics & Photonics.

William Asher has been promoted to president of Princeton Instruments (PI), a Trenton, N.J.-based maker of scientific cameras, spectrographs and optics. He has been vice president of product development and engineering at PI for the past eight years. He previously was general manager of Balzers Optical Corp. and executive vice president of operations and engineering at Boston Advanced Technologies and On-Site Analysis.