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.

July 10, 2025
2:00 pm
Norm Asbjornson Hall
Room 149

on the Montana State Univeristy Campus

Click here to join via WebEx

Download the flyer here

Jenn Cable, President, Thorlabs

Jenn Cable
President
Thorlabs, Inc.

A view inside a leading photonics industry player

Learn how a career in the photonics industry can be fulfilling and fun. 

Biographical Sketch

Jenn Cable is the President of Thorlabs, Inc., a leader in the photonics industry. Thorlabs provides tools, instruments, and systems to academic, government, public, and private sector research and development (R&D) labs, delivering industry-leading solutions for photonics-enabled applications. As President, Jenn has expanded the company’s global reach by entering new technology and application areas, with a focus on quantum technologies, optical telecom/datacom, factory floor automation, medical imaging, and environmental sensing.  Jenn has led an operational transformation with a focus on automation, modernization, and scaling, while de-risking and onshoring critical supply chains and furthering a vertical integration strategy to support precision manufacturing. Under Jenn’s leadership as President, the company is a thriving global organization that employs over 3,000 employees with sales, engineering, and manufacturing facilities across nine countries.

Past Speakers

Date Speaker Group Summary
6/30/2025

Trent Berg

Aurora

A Montana Story: Farming to Photonics

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 
Sensing Sensors Using Integrating Spheres

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
2 The Photonics Group,West Chester, OH

Using the LaserSafePC software for laser safety calculations 

Video

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

Video

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
Video

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