LAKE OSWEGO, OR-Don Dooley, former founder of Scientific Spectrum (sold to ILC Technology) and Molectron Detector (acquired by Coherent in 2003 with continued operation in Portland, OR), has started a new detector company called Spectrum Detector Inc. The company will design and manufacture both standard and custom radiometric detectors, electronics, and instruments based on both thermal and photon detector technology for applications in research, medicine, process control, and optical radiometry.
“I’ve had a passion for pyroelectric technology since the late 1970’s,” said Spectrum Detector president Don Dooley. “With our innovation in electronics and years of experience in detectors and optical calibration, we intend to introduce products that focus on radiometric sensing for scientific, commercial, and niche applications.” Dooley intends to continue working in close collaboration with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST; Boulder, CO) to add value to his product offering.
Dooley is joined by Mark Stout (a former senior product engineer at Molectron) as partial owner, and Stout will serve as manufacturing manager for Spectrum Detector. Together, Dooley and Stout bring over 50 years of experience in detector products to the company. Dooley has also announced that Sid Levingston has joined the company as engineering manager. Levingston was formerly a senior electronic engineer with Molectron Detector and Coherent (Santa Clara, CA) before joining the company.
Spectrum Detector will introduce its first new products at the Photonics West show, January 2007 in San Jose, CA. Included in the new product offering are optical trap detectors, hybrid pyroelectric detectors, analog detector instruments, and USB-powered digital detector products.
-Gail Overton
CORRECTION
An article about Arasor (Mountain View, CA) in the November 1, 2006 issue of Optoelectronics Report contained some inaccuracies, according to Larry Marshall, a principal at Arasor. Marshall notes that the cost of Sarbanes/Oxley compliance is not $100 million but that a company’s annual revenues need to be greater than $100 million to justify the cost of going public. In addition, Marshall explained that Arasor is not facing litigation; rather, the company had received a letter threatening to sue them if certain monies were not paid (that lawsuit has yet to be filed, according to Marshall). Finally, Arasor expects to see $30 million in orders for 2006, not $45 million.