Wilhelm Kaenders

Biography

 Wilhelm Kaenders is co-founder of TOPTICA Photonics AG, one of the leading European high-tech laser and photonics company, headquartered in Gräfelfing near Munich, Germany and with offices in Rochester, NY and San Jose, CA in the US. With now 200-people the company focuses on laser development and production for sophisticated, high-precision test and measurement laser tools for industry and academia.  He runs the company since its start in 1998 and as Vorstand/President he has directed the growth from a small start-up to a fully developed international operation. TOPTICA’s core business addresses the international industrial and academic research and emerging industrial application markets. The scientific field of quantum optics, in particular the strongly emerging cold atom and ion physics activities have been using the laser instrumentation developed at TOPTICA for many years documented in hundreds of scientific papers. Joint activities with the Optical Science Center in Tucson, AZ (Prof. Mansuripur) led to the development of static and dynamic optical disk test equipment, which is still used globally today for all Xbox-related disk production activities. Driven by the request of the print industry, sophisticated laser technology was developed using blue laser diode technology in 2000 for direct structuring of silver and polymer-based printing plates. The recent expansion of the company’s activities into the field of biophotonics was driven and spearheaded by him in 2009, leading to the recent acquisition of TILL Photonics GmbH, a live-cell imaging company, also based near Munich.

Research Interest

 Optical Science Center