Vector Photonics is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jon Orchard as Principal Device Engineer. Jon will help fast-track the company’s PCSEL technology into next-generation datacoms, additive manufacturing and 3D printing markets.

Dr. Richard Taylor, CTO of Vector Photonics, said, “Dr. Jon Orchard is a well-known and well-respected engineer in the photonics industry and a great asset to our business. He will play a critical part in expediting our PCSEL device development, optimising it for a fabless environment.

“Jon brings extensive experience of compound semiconductor EEL and VCSEL development and has worked on both active and passive photonic device fabrication. He also has unique expertise in MOCVD and MBE products, machines and characterisation equipment. This was gained whilst he was a KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership) candidate at the University of Glasgow, collaborating with CST Global (now Sivers Photonics) on their MOCVD development, where he later became a development engineer.”

Jon has a degree in Solid State Devices and a PhD, ‘Development of Electrically Pumped VECSELs’, from the University of Sheffield. His post-doctoral research on ‘Silicon based quantum dot (QD) lasers and light sources’ was an EPSRC-funded, collaborative project with UCL, Cardiff and Warwick. Jon has 18 published, peer-reviewed articles and many national and international conference credits to his name where he was the invited or guest-speaker.

Jon likes to run, hill-walk and rock-climb and can often be found on a snowboard or kayak. He also has a passion for cooking, best done with a beer in hand!