Dr Steve Norman is CTO of SPI Lasers; he joined SPI in 2000 as UK Operations Director and was responsible for establishing SPI’s UK operations, in particular, the Hedge End fiber-manufacturing facilities. Steve has played a pivotal role in the development and qualification of the company’s high-power fiber laser products and in 2006 was appointed CTO.
In this role, Steve has wide ranging responsibilities for the current and future technology platform for the company and is extensively involved with our customers and the Laser community.
Steve Norman has over 30 years experience in advanced optical fiber technology, received his Ph D from the University of Southampton, and is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
As Chief Scientist, Mikhail is a key member of Steve Norman’s team with a special interest in the fundamentals of laser design and performance.
Prior to joining SPI, Mikhail completed a PhD in fiber optics at University College London, and then joined the prestigious Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton in 1991 where in 1999 he was appointed Professor of Optical Communications. To-date, he has filed twenty patents, over one hundred research publications and has received several international awards, including the prestigious Metrology award from the Confederation of British Industry for his work on grating measuring systems for characterizing long chirped fiber gratings. He is on sabbatical leave from the ORC, and continues to be active as a mentor and supervisor for several PhD students.
Don has responsibility for Laser Build and Customer Services. In this role he leads our procurement final assembly and transactional information services for both the supply side and delivery functions of SPI.
Before joining SPI, Riddell was Manufacturing Manager for Assembly and Test of Tunable Lasers with Marconi Optical Components (now Bookham Technology) and also for 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s integrated transmitters. Prior to Marconi, Don spent 11 years with Agilent Technologies (formerly BT&D) with responsibilities for high-reliability submarine pump lasers and EDFA products and latterly was Product Manager for 980nm Submarine Pump Lasers.
As Product Development Director and a member of the SPI senior team, Robin has responsibility for the development and introduction to manufacture of new Pulsed and low power CW platforms and product variants.
Prior to joining SPI, Robin was Director of Optical Packaging for Bookham Technology responsible for the development of an extensive portfolio of packaged optical devices. He also developed a new range of commercial radar systems at Raytheon Marine, and at Marconi was employed as a design engineer on DBS receivers and various military programmes.
Robin received a Bachelor of Science Degree (hons) in Physics, from Leeds University and has over 25 years experience in the field of microwave and optical design.