Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the
August 29, 2001 edition of U.S. Newspaper. All rights reserved.
From the Ivory Tower: UltraFast Optical
If your high tech firm needs to rent a clean room, or
needs to make something in a nanofabrication lab, come to Princeton.
“Our center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials (POEM)
is a place to come for technical assistance and, possibly, very
valuable
technology,” says Joseph X. Montemarano, director of industrial
liaison for Princeton University. Montemarano works with POEM and
the other scientific programs at Princeton University to set up
entrepreneurial
and corporate opportunities (“The Best of Both Worlds,” U.S.
1, August 22).
How to find opportunities with commercial applications will be
Montemarano’s
topic for the U.S. 1 Technology Forum. He will speak on Thursday,
August 30, at 4 p.m. at the Doral Forrestal on “From the Ivory
Tower: a Princeton Guide to Valuable Technology.” The lecture
is part of U.S. 1’s Technology Showcase, held in conjunction with
the Princeton Chamber’s Business Trade Fair from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission is free. Call 609-452-7000.
Among the firms that, as POEM members, have tapped its resources are
Epitaxx (now a division of J.D.S. Uniphase, www.epitaxx.com), Greg
Olson’s Sensors Unlimited (www.sensorsinc.com), Pennsylvania-based
Global Photonic Energy Corporation, Hopewell-based PD-LD
and Princeton Optronics, now at 1 Electronics Drive in Hamilton.
Use of the fabrication labs and the clean room at Princeton’s
Engineering
Quadrangle is included in POEM membership, which costs $20,000 to
$50,000 a year, but requires working in sponsored research
collaborations.
The lab costs $1 million a year to maintain and has more than 100
users, including at least 20 visiting scientists and engineers from
industry. It is especially strong in infrared for night vision and
cameras.
UltraFast Optical Systems (www.ultrafastoptical.com) is one of the
companies that started out in POEM’s laboratories and now has a
technology
on the way to market. Professor Paul Prucnal has an
“all-optical”
switching technology to eliminate bottlenecks in electronic switching
systems, says Tom Curtis, CEO of Ultra Fast Optical Systems, which
is based on Prucnal’s discoveries. Prucnal thinks he can use the
technique
for both telecommunications and medical applications.
Prucnal might have the ultimate answer to increasing
bandwidth. Some say his solution could rev speeds up to what now seems
a preposterous speed — 500 gigabits. He is pioneering with an
all-optical switch, as opposed to a combination of optical and
electrical.
The device is called a Terahertz Optical Assymetric Demultiplexer
(TOAD). It applies “interferometric principles” to produce
a switching action. Interferometers compare two optical signals and
they switch them in one direction or another. “Paul creates very
rapid phase shifts in optical signals so you can use interferometers
to control them,” says Curtis.
“The fastest commercially available is 10 billion bits (10 gigs)
a second,” says Curtis. “Over the next couple of years, 40
gigabits will be deployed. People are planning systems going behind
40, but that is five years away. In principle, Paul’s technology
allows
you to go out to 500 gigabits.”
“Using Paul’s fast switching technology to enhance the performance
of optical (lightwave) communication systems, we can shift the wave
length of light in a transmission system. We can regenerate the signal
in an all optical fashion to allow higher transmission rates for one
particular speed.”
The growth of UltraFast reflects current policies at Princeton in
several ways:
Facilities use. “As members of POEM, we have accessto the clean room facility and the library and staff,” saysCurtis.The state-supported Center for Ultrafast Laser Applications, locatedon the second level of Frist Chemistry building at Princeton, is alsocontributing to the company’s research.Each member of POEM must be assigned a university staff member toact as liaison. UltraFast’s is Ivan Glesk. “Since Ivan and Paulare both consultants to the company, within the limits they areallowed,we get their help. And we give an unrestricted research grant to Paulto support his laboratory,” says Curtis.Licensing rights: “We have exclusive rights to thepatent portfolio which Paul and his research group developed,”says Curtis. “In return, the university took an equity stake inthe company, for an undisclosed amount. If we sell products, theuniversitywill get some licensing fee.” John Ritter, the university’sdirectorof patents and licensing, negotiates these deals.Employing engineering technologies for medicalapplications .What appears to be good for telecommunications might also be valuablefor a medical purpose, so Montemarano takes every opportunity to tryout dual applications. In the case of UltraFast, doctors may be ableto find tumors by analyzing how light is reflected back from thetissue.Tumors have lots of oxygenated blood on one end and a dead mass,deoxygenatedhemoglobin, at the other. So doctors may be able to “see”tumors without ever penetrating the tissue with anything other thanlight.”The light is scattered differently when it passes the oxygenatedand non-oxygenated blood, and, using our fast switching and detectingtechnology, we can locate the tumor,” says Curtis. “You willbe able to see those profiles without penetrating the tissue withanything other than light.”A former colleague of Curtis, Marty Singer, was a friend of theinitialinvestor, Mason Sexton. Together they formed the company last yearand hammered out the licensing deal with Princeton, then recruitedCurtis. Curtis was born on a Ohio dairy farm, majored in math andphysics at Kenyon College, Class of 1963, and earned his doctorateat Yale. He worked at AT&T and Bell Labs, doing R&D and managingtechnicalproducts, and is known for a mid-1980s project on using digital signalprocessing to eliminate echoes from satellite service. Curtis methis wife, Audrey, at Bell Labs. She is chief technology officer ofeLink Communications in Bethesda and New York City, and they havefour children, the youngest in high school.Wit SoundView, an investment banking firm in Connecticut known forits photonics expertise, is working on the first round of venturecapital funding, slated for $5 to $15 million. Curtis expects to opena larger office in Holmdel and quickly ramp up from two full-timeemployees to 20.Ultra Fast Optical Systems Inc., 5 Canyon Run Road,Holmdel 07733. Thomas H. Curtis, president and CEO. 732-888-6073;fax, 609-258-2158. Home page: www.ultrafastoptical.comTop Of PageFuture Video DisplaySome might question why a university should contributeresources to a multimedia frenzy. Why not let corporate intereststake care of this sector? “The need to create more demandingmultimediaapplications is what forces us to move ahead,” says JoeMontemarano,industrial liaison at Princeton University. “Five years ago peoplehad a hard time thinking of what the useful applications would be.It wasn’t that long ago when we thought 1,200 baud was fast.””Today industry has 10 and 40 gigabits as the next communicationstandard,” he says. “So if we don’t find applications thatare demanding, that are really hungry for bandwidth, it slows ourability to come up with new ideas, to take ultra fast opticalcommunicationsout of dreamland and find real applications.”One such multimedia application is the giant image wall. Displayresolutionhas not kept up with memory increase, and the amount of informationthat you can see is limited by the display screen, explains PrincetonUniversity’s Kai Li. With a display wall, scientists can visualizetheir data at scale and see more information.The university pioneered in building these image walls. Its”scalablewalls” are installed at the computer science building and thenew student center. These high resolution back-projection wallsmeasure10 by 20 feet, have from 12 to 20 million pixels, and are controlledby a cluster of PCs. When not in use, they look like a large pieceof plexiglass.Intel uses this technology in new chip designs. Rather than printout big pieces of paper that people shuffle around large tables orthe floor, designers can actually move things around on these modules.Another use is for demonstrating a sequence of many live web pages.Also, a visiting scientist from Imax is working with the walls.From 12 to 20 PCs “run” the wall. “It truly is animmersiveenvironment, with surround sound, with video cameras that detect andrespond to your gestures. The wall is packed with information andthe resolution is so clear and crisp, whether you are standing inthe back of the room or right on top of it, it is something that willdraw you in,” says Montemarano. “It has created an environmentfor multi-users to work together in real time.”— Barbara FoxNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
