BELLINGHAM, Wash., and PITTSFIELD, Mass., Sept. 23, 2013 — Entries are now being accepted through Oct. 11 for the prestigious 2014 Prism Awards for Photonics Innovation. The new extended deadline reflects a permanent change in the annual awards program, responding to requests to move the date out of the busy late-summer period.

The international competition honors new technology and product inventions from the multibillion-dollar optics and photonics industry, and is sponsored by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and leading industry publisher Photonics Media.

A panel of international experts is poised to judge entries submitted for the 2014 Prism Awards. The competition recognizes new products and inventions that break with conventional ideas, solve problems and improve life through the generation and application of the essential technologies of optics and photonics.

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The TeraDiode team, including CEO Parviz Tayebati and Vice President of Sales and Marketing Jay Liebowitz (left and right at podium), accept the company's 2013 Prism Award from Jenoptik CEO Michael Mertin, far right, who is also president of Photonics21 and a commissioner of the German government.

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The Prism Awards boost visibility and credibility for companies with the most creative product inventions. Products that have or will have been sold, delivered or launched between Jan. 1, 2013, and Feb. 6, 2014, are eligible. Companies may enter one product for multiple categories or multiple products in separate categories.

Entries are being accepted in the categories of:
Advanced Manufacturing
Defense and Security
Detectors, Sensing, Imaging and Cameras
Energy
Industrial Lasers
Information and Communication
Other Light Sources
Life Sciences and Biophotonics
Optics and Optical Components
Scientific Lasers
Test, Measurement, Metrology

Finalists will be announced in November; winners will be announced Feb. 5 at a gala banquet held during SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco.

The competition is judged by an independent panel of industry experts that includes innovators from top companies, leaders in academia, business developers, previous award winners and financial experts. Judges for the 2014 awards are:

Uri Abrams, PD-LD Inc.

Joel Bagwell, Edmund Optics

Michael Bove, MIT Media Lab

John Dexheimer, Private Equity Investing

Jason Eichenholz, Open Photonics

Mickey Frish, Physical Sciences Inc.

Joseph Gortych, Opticus IP Law PLLC

Randy Heyler, Ondax Inc.

Marc Himel, Jenoptik Optical Systems

Wilhelm Kaenders, Toptica Photonics

Kenneth Kaufmann, Hamamatsu

Michael Lebby, Translucent Inc.

Robert Lieberman, Intelligent Optical Systems Inc.

Jian Liu, PolarOnyx

Jason McClure, Princeton Instruments

Paul McManamon, Exciting Technology

Marc Nantel, Research & Innovation, Niagara College

Jim Pearson, CREOL, Special Consultant

Ralf Reiter, Schott AG

Ryszard Romaniuk, Warsaw University of Technology

Linda Smith, Ceres Technologies

Laura Smoliar, Consultant and Entrepreneur

Lynn Strickland, Idex Optics & Photonics

Ferechteh Hosseini Teherani, Nanovation

Alastair Wilson, Photonics of ESP KTN

Several 2013 Prism Award winners have collected new honors since last February’s presentations, and a number of companies have reported advances with their winning products. Among them:

Heidelberg Instruments has added a second write mode, a new light source option and other features to its MicroPG501 desktop-based maskless aligner.

Visualant has developed a liquid-analysis product using the ChromaID structured-light technology for environmental sensing.

Princeton Instrument’s IsoPlane SCT Spectrograph has been sold into leading universities and research laboratories in 12 different countries in North America, Australia, Asia and Europe.

OEwaves’ chip-scale Micro-Opto-Electronic Oscillator has been incorporated into Lockheed Martin's Extended Area Protection and Survivability program’s successful guided test fight of the Miniature Hit-to-Kill (MHTK) interceptor designed to defeat rocket, artillery and mortar targets at ranges greatly exceeding those of current systems.

TAG Optics’ Lens 2.0, a new type of microscope lens that focuses in response to sound waves, has been piling up additional awards, and the company is fine-tuning processes to meet rapidly increasing demand.

Verisante Technology has completed a full launch of its Aura skin cancer detector throughout clinics in Canada, with additional units in Europe.

For more information on the Prism Awards, or to fill out the application, visit: www.photonicsprismaward.com