Kopin Corp.'s president and CEO, John C.C. Fan, will participate in a panel discussion on homeland defense technologies at an Emerging Technologies Conference to be held Thursday at 2 p.m. at MIT's Kresge Auditorium in Cambridge, Mass. Scheduled to join Fan are Sanford L. Weiner, a research fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies, and Starnes Walker, chief scientist for the Office of Naval Research. The discussion will focus on the effects of nuclear terrorism and bioterrorism on federal funding and resulting business opportunities for homeland defense technologies. Kopin makes microdisplays for the electronics, industrial and military markets and is a supplier of heterojunction bipolar transistor wafers for power amplifier integrated circuits. . . . Lynx Photonic Networks, a Calabasas Hills, Calif., provider of photonic switching solutions, announced today that Delcomm srl will distribute its optical switching products in Italy. Delcomm, of Turin, is the optical components division of Delo Instruments Group, a Milan-based distributor of test and measurement products primarily for the telecommunications market. . . . nLight, a Vancouver, Wash., manufacturer of high-power semiconductor lasers, announced that Dynotech Instruments Ltd. will be the exclusive distributor in India of its CW (continuous wave) and QCW (quasi-continuous wave) high-power visible and near-infrared diode laser product lines. Dynotech, based in New Delhi, distributes laser, electro-optic, optomechanic and optical components for industrial and scientific markets. . . . Luke P. La Valle Jr. was appointed to the board of Photonic Products Group Inc., a Northvale, N.J., maker of optical components and devices and laser accessories and instruments, succeeding the late Frank Wiedeman. La Valle is president and CEO of American Capital Management Inc. PPGI also recently announced that Warren Ruderman, who founded the company as Inrad in 1973 (it was renamed PPGI in 2003), died on Aug. 29; he was 85. Ruderman was Inrad's chairman, CEO and CTO until he retired in 2000.