OpTeC Colloquium
OpTeC sponsors a colloquium throughout the academic year. This is a forum where a wide range of optical science and engineering topics are discussed at a level that can be understood by a broad spectrum of optics students, staff, and faculty. The primary purposes are to train students to give effective scientific talks and to promote cross-disciplinary interactions of students, staff, faculty, and local industry employees. Speakers include MSU students, staff, and faculty, and visitors from external universities, research labs, and companies.
July 10, 2025
2:00 pm
Norm Asbjornson Hall
Room 149
on the Montana State Univeristy Campus
Click here to join via WebEx
Download the flyer here
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Jenn Cable
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A view inside a leading photonics industry player
Learn how a career in the photonics industry can be fulfilling and fun.
Biographical Sketch
Jenn Cable is the President of Thorlabs, Inc., a leader in the photonics industry. Thorlabs provides tools, instruments, and systems to academic, government, public, and private sector research and development (R&D) labs, delivering industry-leading solutions for photonics-enabled applications. As President, Jenn has expanded the company’s global reach by entering new technology and application areas, with a focus on quantum technologies, optical telecom/datacom, factory floor automation, medical imaging, and environmental sensing. Jenn has led an operational transformation with a focus on automation, modernization, and scaling, while de-risking and onshoring critical supply chains and furthering a vertical integration strategy to support precision manufacturing. Under Jenn’s leadership as President, the company is a thriving global organization that employs over 3,000 employees with sales, engineering, and manufacturing facilities across nine countries.
Past Speakers
| Date | Speaker | Group | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6/30/2025 |
Trent Berg |
Aurora |
A Montana Story: Farming to Photonics |
| 5/1/2025 |
Tomasz S. Tkaczyk |
Rice University |
Development of the next generation of biophotonic/photonic imaging systems |
| 2/20/2025 |
Meredith Kupinski |
University of Arizona |
Tracking the sky's neutral point positions for atmospheric turbidity |
| 1/23/2025 |
Andrew Oliver |
Montana State University |
Productization: Peeling the Onion or How to design and build millions of high-quality devices |
| 10/24/2024 |
Patrick Franzen |
SPIE |
Scholarly Publishing in 2024: A publisher's perspective |
| 9/12/2024 |
Jed Hancock |
Space Dynamics Laboratory, Utah State University |
Exploring Atmospheric Gravity Waves: NASA's Atmospheric Waves Experiment on the International Space Station |
| 6/13/2024 |
Matthew Birkebk |
Labsphere |
Fundamental Calibrations for Remote |
| 11/30/2023 |
Stefan Heinemann |
Phix, North America |
Packaging technologies of integrated photonics for quantum technology |
| 4/27/2023 |
Allison Barto |
Ball Aerospace |
Engineering Discovery: Building NASA's James Webb Space Telescope |
| 3/30/2023 |
Thomas Coleman |
Silixa, LLC |
Fiber optic distributed sensing for environmental and infrastructure monitoring |
| 3/23/2023 |
John Howell |
Chapman University |
Doppler Gyroscopes: Do we really understand the gyroscope? |
| 2/16/2023 |
Krishna Rupavatharam, Ph.D. |
Spectrum Lab |
Perspectives on the evolution of microwave and quantum photonics at Spectrum Lab |
| 2/9/2023 |
John W. Sheppard, Ph.D., FIEE |
MSU Gianforte School of Computing |
Demystifying machine learning through eXplainable AI |
| 1/26/2023 |
Finland Photonics |
Finnish Photonics Cluster |
Photonics in Finland |
| 12/8/2022 |
Nicholas Borys. Ph.D. |
MSU Physics |
An introduction to the MonArk NSF Quantum Foundry |
| 10/12/2022 |
Alex Hills |
Carnegie Mellon University |
Mitigating LEO-to-GEO satellite interference |
| 4/14/2022 |
Stephen Schultz |
Brigham Young University, Electrical & computer Engineering |
Dynamic measurement of soft body armor using optical fiber sensing |
| 3/31/2022 |
Bradley Whitaker |
MSU Electrical & Computer Engineering |
How machine learning can help scientists who shoot fish and insects with lasers |
| 2/24/2022 |
Tom Hausekn |
Optica |
Hot topics in optics and photonics |
| 2/25/2021 |
Jim Webb1 & Scott Wohlstein2 |
1 G.L. Services, Hertfordshire, England |
Using the LaserSafePC software for laser safety calculations |
| 2/4/2021 |
Brian D'Urso |
MSU Physics Department |
Towards precision pulsed levitated optomechanics in a magneto-gravitational trap |
| 1/21/2021 |
Wataru Nakagawa |
MSU ECE Department |
Nanophotonics Applications and Sabbatical Exploration |
| 1/14/2021 |
Nathan Kuehl Bryan Scherrer |
MSU Physics and ECE Dep'ts | Kuehl: Troubleshooting, repair and calibration of Burleigh WA-1500 Wavemeter. Scherrer: Model and simulation of wing-beat modulation lidar for making 3D maps of flying insects . VIDEO |
| 11/19/2020 | Dr. Charles Kankelborg | MSU Physics Department |
Designing a far ultraviolet spectrometer for the sun as a starAbstract |
| 11/12/2020 | Dr. Ioannis Roudis | MSU ECE Department | Nonlinear noise in coherent optical communications systems Abstract |
| 4/09/2015 | Dr. James G. Wessel | Seagate Corporation | Hard Disc-Drive Recording |
| 3/19/2015 | Dr. Jake Jacobsen | Synopsys, Optical Solution Group | A review of optical design software at Synopsys |
| 2/05/2015 | Dr. Mark A. Wistey | ECE Department, University of Notre Dame | Paths to record lasers and solar cells--and on cheap silicon |
| 11/24/2014 | Dr. Olav Solgaard | ECE Department, Stanford University | Miniaturized endoscopes and implantable sensors for in-vivo studies of cancer biology |
| 11/6/2014 | Dr. Kirk Knobelspiesse | NASA Ames Research Center | Cloud thermodynamic phase detection with polarimetrically sensitive passive sky radiometers. |
| 10/30/2014 | Dr. Kris Merkel | President & CEO S2 Corporation, Bozeman, MT | S2 Extreme Bandwidth Analyzer and Correlator (EBAC):Updates on Improvements and Demonstrations |
| 11/14/2013 | Dr. Upendra Singh | NASA Langley Research Center | Development of a pulsed 2-micron integrated-path differential absorption lidar for CO2 measurements |
| 10/31/2013 | Qing Gu | University of California - San Diego | Semiconductor nanolasers for dense chip-scale integration |
| 9/16/2013 | Dr. Jim Schwiegerling | College of Optical Sciences - University of Arizona | Leading edge optics for optimizing vision |
| 5/14/2013 | Dr. John Egan | Advanced Photonic Crystals | The benefits of low temperature hydrothermal crystal growth |
| 4/25/2013 | Dr. Edwin ("Ted") Heilweil | National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) | Time-resolved terahertz studies of carrier dynamics in P3HT and zinc-phthalocyanine/C60 nanolayered thin films |
| 2/26/2013 | Dr. Larry Johnson and Dr. Mark Carroll | Newport Corporation | Part 1. Overview of laser diode technology and applications; Part 2. Job opportunities and desired skills for graduates at Newport/ILX Lightwave |
| 2/8/2013 | Dr. Toralf Scharf | Institute of Microtechnology, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland | From achromatic microlenses to submicron focusing: physical optics at the micro-scale |