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.
Join us for a special OpTeC Colloquium co-hosted by:
 |
 |
 |
June 30, 2025
Norm Asbjornson Hall
Room 165
on the Montana State Univeristy Campus
Click here to join via WebEx
Download the flyer here
|
|
Trent Berg
|
A Montana Story: Farming to Photonics
Abstract
Trent Berg, Montana native and Montana State University (MSU) alumnus (2004 BS in CS, 2009 MS in ECE), has been a visionary pioneer in Montana’s photonics ecosystem. Trent will review his personal journey from northeastern Montana to MSU, from Bridger Photonics to founding Blackmore Sensors & Analytics to now leading the Aurora Innovations team in their new building on the MSU Innovation Campus. He will recount the trials and tribulations, the exciting and harrowing moments that have shaped his career. Join us for an interactive colloquium and a unique opportunity to connect with a leader in Montana’s technical industry.
Biographical Sketch
Trent Berg grew up on his family’s wheat farm near Wolf Point, Montana, on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Trent attended MSU and received a BS in Computer Science (2004) and MS in Electrical Engineering (2009) with an emphasis in optics & photonics, working for S2 Corporation in between his degrees. He was Lead Photonics Engineer at Bridger Photonics for seven years until co-founding Blackmore Sensors and Analytics in 2015, which was acquired by self-driving technology company Aurora Innovations in 2019 for its advanced long-range coherent lidar technology to enable self-driving trucking applications. Trent is currently the Director of Lidar Integration and Testing. He manages the Bozeman site for Aurora, which has about 70 employees, and recently moved into a new 78,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art lidar facility on the MSU Innovation Campus.
Past Speakers
| Date | Speaker | Group | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |