Adele Ratcliff, Director of the Manufacturing Resiliency & Assurance office and the Industrial Base Analysis & Sustainment Program (IBAS) within the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy (ODASD(MIBP)), was today’s keynote speaker at the AmeriCOM symposium. AmeriCOM (Center for Optics and Manufacturing), which is based in Rochester, NY, invited speakers from across the optics industry to speak to Rochester’s role in and commitment to a strong, national manufacturing base.

“Here in Rochester, you are connected, you know how to compete, you know your capacity, you know where your gaps and opportunities are,” said Ratcliff, in her address. She acknowledged that the nation’s industrial base has been “corrosively affected” for the past several decades, but is now “exiting an era of atrophy.”

Radcliff said that the optics industry in Rochester “holds a model of what we need to be doing on the national level.” The model includes a pipeline that prepares students with necessary education for core competencies, sufficient entry-level and technician jobs, as well as training and employment in the advanced skills necessary for high-level industrial competitiveness.

Radcliff also acknowledged the role that the Rochester optics industry plays in America’s industrial base, and noted that participating in our industrial and manufacturing economy is another way to serve the country.

Industry speakers at the symposium included Jessica DeGroote Nelson, PhD, Director of Technology and Strategy at Optimax; Keith Rozenburg, PhD, and senior scientist for SCHOTT; Alexis Vogt, PhD, and Associate Professor of Optics at Monroe Community College; John Schoen, a chemist who works at the University of Rochester as Director of Finance for the Laboratory for Laser Energetics; Susan Houde-Walter, PhD, former president of the Optical Society and CEO of LaserMaxDefense; and Dan Harris, who has worked at the Naval Air Warfare Center in California for 35 years and has degrees from MIT and California Institute of Technology.

Tom Battley, Executive Director of NY Photonics, introduced the speakers.