ManufacturingmanufacturingPhotonicsphotonics
27 January 2025 / 07:30 - 21:00 PST
EPIC SUMMIT on Optimizing and Scaling Photonics Manufacturing in San Francisco
San Francisco, CA, USA



This is an exceptional meeting to exchange best-practice related to manufacturing in the photonics industry. Speakers and attendees will present examples, discuss challenges, and be inspired by lessons learned based on their own experience, as well as lessons learned from related sectors such as semiconductors known for its high-volume and automated production manufacturing. While the photonics industry is characterized by a high-mix low-volume of products, we all need to prepare to upscale production and have a constant focus on reducing manufacturing costs. The meeting will also discuss supply chain management and outsourcing strategies, automation, design of own proprietary tools and solutions, product design for volume manufacturing, standardization, … All presentations are short 15 minutes followed by 5 minutes Q&A. Networking breaks are long to allow time for networking. Sponsorship + table top opportunities available.

All participants biographies and company descriptions are available HERE

Agenda

27 January 2025, Monday

07:30-08:30 Registration and Networking Breakfast

08:30-10:00 Presentations of 15 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A:

  • KEYNOTE by COHERENT – Christopher Dorman, Executive Vice President, Lasers Segment (United Kingdom)
  • Intraratio – Ryan  Gamble, CEO (USA)
  • PI – Scott Jordan, Head of Photonics, Senior Director (USA)
  • PHIX Photonics Assembly – Joost van Kerkhof, COO (The Netherlands)

10:00-10:45 Networking Coffee Break

10:45-12:30 Presentations of 15 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A:

  • Bay Photonics – Glenn George, CEO (United Kingdom)
  • Jabil – Hendrik Zachmann, Business Development Manager (Germany)
  • Optimax – Mike Hyman, CTO (USA)
  • Synopsys – Maryvonne Chalony, Application Engineering Manager (France)
  • Innocise – Marc Schöneich, CEO (Germany)
  • Panel Discussion “Managing growth while dealing with customer expectations”

12:30-14:00 Networking Lunch

14:00-15:30 Presentations of 15 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A:

  • PanDao – Oliver Fähnle, CTO (Switzerland)
  • Cailabs – Jean-Francois Morizur, CEO (France)
  • Fluence – Michał Nejbauer, CEO (Poland)
  • Luceda – Matthew Delaney, Business Development Manager – North America (Belgium)
  • Fireside chat discussion with Eric Mottay, Founder of Amplitude Laser Group

15:30-16:15 Networking Coffee Break

16:15-17:30 Presentations of 15 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A:

  • EXFO – Leo Lin, MDR (Manufacturing, Design, Research) Business Unit Director (Canada)
  • Aktyvus Photonics – Saulius Rancevas – Head of Design (Lithuania)
  • Bevenic Group – Jyrki Huttunen, Director of Business Development (Finland)
  • Sanmina – Eric Sislian, Vice President/GM Advanced Microsystems Technologies Division (USA)

17:30-21:00 Networking Reception and Dinner (also open to CEOs and CTOs of EPIC member companies)

Venue

Marines’ Memorial Club & Hotel (Address: 609 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA 94102, United States).

Speakers

Ryan Gamble (CEO) is the CEO and Founder of Intraratio Corporation, a software (SaaS) company he successfully created and bootstrapped, originally serving the Silicon Photonics manufacturing market, and now expanding across the broader semiconductor and advanced electronics industry. Customers are high reliability, highly integrated electronics manufacturers, with product lines ranging from silicon photonics to semiconductor integrated communications, automotive, medical, and space/military devices. Intraratio’s solutions automate product traceability, with real time data analytics and quality control, and have been successfully deployed in the USA, Europe, Mexico, China, Taiwan and Thailand providing global visibility to factory lines. With an electrical and computer engineering degree, he spent 20+ years in the semiconductor industry as a product engineer, with a focus on software data systems development, to improve product manufacturing and testing of commercial and space/military product lines including multi-core DSP, RF and Silicon Photonics. His passion is working with all levels, to identify and recommend solutions to business and engineering problems, based on a deep technical understanding of operational processes and product complexities.

Michael Hyman (CTO) started his journey with the company in 2004 as a high school intern. Over the course of more than 15 years, he has taken on numerous roles, from working as an Optician in all manufacturing departments to serving as a Manufacturing Metrology Engineer, group leader, and Manufacturing Manager. With such a diverse range of experiences, Mike's statement that "Optimax allows people the opportunity to grow and chase what they are passionate about" reflects his personal journey within the company, where he has thrived and contributed to its growth.

Joost van Kerkhof (COO) started PHIX in 2018 together with Albert Hasper (CEO). He has more than 30 years of experience in the micro-nano technology industry. Before starting PHIX, Joost was the CEO of XiO Photonics since 2013 and the COO of LioniX International since the merger of XiO Photonics, LioniX and SatraX into LioniX International in 2016. Before joining XiO Photonics, Joost worked with Sensata Technologies as Director Business Integration. In this role, he built a significant experience in business case analysis and development. Before his role in business management, he has held positions within Texas Instruments (which became Sensata Technologies in 2006) as Director R&D and Director Operations. In these positions, he has brought several products in high volume production. Joost holds a master’s and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering specialized in micro-nano technology and (bio)sensors.

Hendrik Zachmann (Business Development Manager) has been part of the Jabil Optics team in Jena since 2019. Prior to joining Jabil, he worked at Carl Zeiss SMT (Semiconductor Equipment) and Solarion (Solar Cells). Hendrik holds a degree in physics from the University of Leipzig and received his doctorate in 2011. With more than 15 years of professional experience as a project leader & manager and his physical background, Hendrik is ideally suited to successfully guide customer projects from the initial idea to production and always be the ideal contact person.

Business Development Manager at Jabil

Jean-François Morizur (CEO) is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cailabs, a global deeptech company. Before launching the company in 2013, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group as Senior Associate. A graduate of the École normale supérieure in Paris, Jean-François holds two doctoral degrees in quantum optics, from Sorbonne University and the Australian National University. While working on his thesis at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory, he co-invented Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC), a groundbreaking technology that underpins Cailabs' products. As Cailabs’ CEO, he is responsible for driving the company's vision and strategic direction. Under his leadership, Cailabs has emerged as a leading company in its field, pushing the boundaries of what is achievable in the world of optical products with groundbreaking applications in space, defence, energy and other major industries.

Scott Jordan (Head of Photonics) is a manager and physicist by training, with an MBA in Finance and New Venture Management. He has driven multiple business development and turnaround endeavours. Scott’s patents for fast interfacing and DAC resolution enhancement helped advance nanopositioning performance more than a hundredfold, enabling capabilities for applications as diverse as nanopatterning, atomic force microscopy, MEMS, microlithography, x-ray interferometry and photonics. He developed the first digital gradient search, fundamental to photonics test and packaging, and established a successful business upon it. He has repeatedly driven the field forward as device designs have advanced. His most recent work enables one-step, global alignment optimization across multiple inputs, outputs and degrees of freedom of today’s Silicon Photonics devices. A confirmed technology evangelist, Scott publishes and presents frequently. He was named a PI Fellow in 2016.

Head of Photonics; Senior Director at PI (Physik Instrumente)

Glenn George (CEO) has over 40 years of experience in the photonics packaging industry having worked for STC, Nortel and Bookham in their Paignton based centre of excellence. He formed Bay Photonics in 2007 to address the need of retaining this expertise to support customers in Europe and North America with their advanced photonic packaging design requirements. With the wider use of the photonics in areas such as 5G, sensors and Quantum communication, detection and encryption, Bay Photonics has grown from just the original 2 founders to become an established and impressively equipped packaging house with over 30 employees accessing world class laboratories which contain state of the art tools for design and manufacture of low to medium volume technology demonstrators, prototypes and production batches of 10s to 1000s/month. Our very well qualified and experienced team are eager to help you realise your next exciting project.

Michał Nejbauer (CEO & Co-Founder) graduated in Physics (field of optics) from Warsaw University by making his first femtosecond CPA system. He then completed his Ph.D. in Laser Centre at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences by developing laser sources for femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy. Michał has more than ten years of hands-on experience in building ultrafast lasers from scratch in various technologies, emphasizing nonlinear light conversion techniques. He founded Fluence with other laser experts as he believes that femtosecond lasers can perform better.

Marc Schoeneich (CEO & Co-Founder) is the Co-Founder and CEO of INNOCISE since 2019. As a Doctor of Materials Science, Université de Lorraine - France and as a Doctor of Engineering, Saarland University - Germany, Mr. Schoeneich has made significant international contributions to new processes and materials in injection molding. He has specific knowledge in the area of adhesion forces and many years of experience in the field of pick and place processes for the smallest and most sensitive components. Marc Schoeneich is a member of the VDMA EMINT Board and has been Chairman of the VDMA Microtechnologies Board since January 2025.

Maryvonne Chalony (Application Engineering Manager) received an M.S. degree in Physics from the University of Nice in 2006 and a Ph.D. in Atomic Physics from the University of Nice in 2010. She is currently an optical engineer at LightTec in Hyères, France, where she is responsible for providing technical support for RSoft software in the European region. RSoft, developed by Synopsys, Inc., is an optical design software dedicated to the simulation of photonic components.

Application Engineering Manager at Synopsys

Jyrki Huttunen (Director of Business Development) has a Master of Science (Tech) degree from Technical University of Helsinki (1986) and an eMBA degree from University of Kuopio (2002). He has worked in various managing positions for SME’s mainly in Finland, and briefly in the USA. He has also co-founded two companies. From 2008 until 2022 he was co-owner and CEO of Oplatek Group Oy. Now he works as Director of Business Development at Bevenic Group Oy.

Director of Business Development at Bevenic Group

Saulius Rancevas (Head of Design) joined Aktyvus Photonics two years ago and has since played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s visual identity and B2B communication strategies. As the only team member without an engineering background, Saulius brings a unique perspective to the organization, combining a strong foundation in visual & mechanical product design with nearly a decade of professional experience in 3D production, animation, and visual storytelling. Currently pursuing a degree in product design at Vilnius Academy of Arts, being deeply committed to understanding client needs and transforming their challenges into compelling visual solutions while bridging the gap between technical innovation and human-centered design.

Oliver Faehnle (CTO) received his PhD from the Technical University Delft, The Netherlands, in “Optics Fabrication and Testing” in 1998 and has been working and teaching in this field ever since, running projects within both environments: academia and industry. He is senior member OSA, senior member SPIE and chairman of the Industrial Advisory Board of the European Optical Society. Besides that, he has been training and teaching Japanese sword fencing, kendo, for more than 30 years increasing his awareness.

Christopher Dorman (Executive Vice President) is the Executive Vice President, Lasers Business, for Coherent Corp., a worldwide leader in materials, networking, and laser technology. As head of Coherent’s Lasers Segment, Dr. Dorman has global management responsibility for Coherent’s laser business, driving research, product development, production, operational excellence, and customer focus. During his 22-year tenure with the company, he established the blueprint for Coherent’s world-class facilities for laser design and manufacturing in Glasgow, Scotland, and in Kaiserslautern and Lübeck, Germany. Dr. Dorman is an active leader in the physics community in the UK. He chaired the UK Photonics Leadership Group for 10 years, is chair of Photonics Scotland, is a visiting professor to the University of Strathclyde, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. Dr. Dorman graduated from Oxford University with an MA (Oxon) in Physics and holds a Ph.D. in Lasers and Quantum Physics from Imperial College, London. He was recognized by Queen Elizabeth II with an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for services to photonic and laser technology and exports in the 2019 Birthday Honours list.

Executive Vice President, Lasers Segment at Coherent

Matthew Delaney (Business Development Manager - North America) is a Ph.D. holder in integrated photonics, focused on phase change materials for reconfigurable photonics during his studies. Post-graduation, he led product development in integrated photonics for multiple startups in the sensing and telecommunications industries. Today, as a Business Development Manager at Luceda Photonics, he provides expert guidance on integrated photonics design to clients.

Business Development Manager at Luceda Photonics

Leo Lin (Business Unit Director) is the BU director in EXFO responsible for the Manufacturing, Design & Research markets. Prior to that, Leo had various leadership roles in product management, sales & marketing and engineering at Finisar, Wistron, EZconn, QXP and Chorum and led multi-functional teams to launch over 16 new product families for data centers, wireless, DWDM transport and FTTx applications. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science from University of Toronto and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University.

MDRBusiness Unit Director at EXFO

Eric Sislian (Vice President/GM Advanced Microsystems Technologies Division) has been with Sanmina since October 2020, driving business growth, operational excellence, and supply chain innovation. He has a broad international background in business development, key customer account management, and mergers and acquisitions. With over 15 years of leadership experience, Eric is skilled in negotiation, business planning, and fostering growth, and he brings strong business acumen, communication, and leadership abilities to his role.

Vice President/GM Advanced Microsystems Technologies Division at Sanmina
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