Webinar Series

Dr. Brendan Kennedy is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Western Australia, Head of BRITElab at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, and Chief Scientific Officer at OncoRes Medical. He received his Ph.D. from Dublin City University in 2006. His doctoral thesis focused on nonlinear polarization rotation in semiconductor optical amplifiers. His current research focuses on the development of optical coherence tomography and optical elastography and their application in a range of fields, particularly in oncology and tissue engineering. He has published >80 peer-reviewed journal papers and has won a number of awards including a West Australian 40under40 Award in 2019.

Henry Haeberle is an Applications Specialist at Thorlabs. Dr. Haeberle received his BS and PhD degrees in Neuroscience from Stanford University and the Univeristy of California, San Francisco, respectively. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford Univeristy School of Medicine and Baylor College of Medicine before working as a Staff Scientist at the University of New South Wales and later as a Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University. At Thorlabs, Henry helps new customers find solutions to their imaging needs and provides technical support for existing customers.

Melissa Eberle is a Regional Sales Manager at Thorlabs Imaging Systems. Dr. Eberle received her BS in Bioengineering from UC Santa Cruz and her PhD in Bioengineering from UC Riverside. After her graduate work, she did a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University before joining Thorlabs as an Applications Specialist.

Martin Parker is responsible for the development of Thorlabs' cameras, camera software, and related accessories. Involved in electronic imaging his entire career, Martin started off as a member of the Eastman Kodak Company research labs. While there, he developed image sensor noise analysis hardware, designed imaging subsystems for a number of products including photographic print and motion picture film scanners, and led the development of an encryption-based image authentication product as well as an early prototype JPEG2000 encoder for cameras. Martin then joined DVC company, a manufacturer of scientific digital cameras, as engineering manager, where he led a rapid expansion of the camera product line before DVC was acquired by Thorlabs in 2011. Martin holds an MSEE from the University of Rochester and a BSEE from the University at Buffalo.

Dr. Reza Salem completed his undergrad degree in Electrical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology in 2001. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2006, where he worked under the supervision of Professor Thomas Murphy. His Ph.D. research included the experimental study of nonlinear optical devices for high-speed optical communication systems. Up until 2009, Reza was a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Gaeta in the Quantum and Nonlinear Photonics research group at Cornell University, where he worked on nonlinear silicon waveguide devices and ultrafast optical signal processing. While at Cornell, Dr. Salem cofounded PicoLuz with Professors Gaeta and Lipson to commercialize the time-lens technology. He joined Thorlabs as our Fiber Laser Division Manager in 2013. Reza has authored or co-author more than 50 journal and conference papers and several US and international patents.

David Gardner has been with Thorlabs for almost 10 years and is currently working as a Senior Process Engineer. Within his role, Dave leads the development and production of our fluoride fiber while also supporting the characterization, testing, and R&D for our silica and fluoride manufacturing teams. Dave also plays a major role in the development of new fiber products and processes.

Craig Szymanski is a Life Science Applications Specialist at Thorlabs Imaging Systems. He has 18 years of microscopy experience with a variety of imaging modalities, including optical, electron, and x-ray. He provides training and support for customers as well as Thorlabs employees on confocal, multiphoton, and other imaging platforms.

Over his career, Bradley Alger, Professor Emeritus of Physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), has published over 100 research articles, including the discovery of retrograde signaling in the mammalian brain, which is mediated by endogenous cannabinoids, the brain’s own marijuana. He is also the author of Defense of the Scientific Hypothesis: From Reproducibility Crisis to Big Data, a book published by Oxford University Press in 2019.  After completing his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972, Alger went on to obtain his doctorate in Research and Experimental Psychology from Harvard University in 1977. As Roger Nicoll's first postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, Alger performed electrophysiological studies on the regulation of inhibitory synaptic transmission in in vitro hippocampal slices. After UCSF, Alger joined the Department of Physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and remained there until retiring from active duties as Professor in 2014. 

Dr. Spagnolo serves as the director of the PolySense Lab, a joint research
lab formed by Thorlabs and the Technical University of Bari. Within that role, he guides a team devoted to the development and implementation of novel gas sensing techniques and the realization of highly sensitive trace-gas sensors. Spagnolo obtained his Ph.D. in physics in 1994 from the University of Bari and worked as a researcher for the National Institute of the Physics of Matter (INFM) from 1997 to 1999. Since 2004, he has been at the Technical University of Bari, formerly as an assistant and associate professor and, starting in 2018, as Full Professor of Applied Physics. In 2019, he became Vice-Rector of the Technical University of Bari, deputy to Technology Transfer. He is also a “Hundred Talent” visiting professor at Shanxi University in Taiyuan (China).

Prof. Spagnolo’s research activities have been documented by more than 210 Scopus publications and include three filed patents. He has given more than 50 invited/keynote presentations at international conferences and workshops. Prof. Spagnolo serves as a reviewer of photonics and sensing-related projects for EU-COST, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Austrian Science Fund, Dutch Research Council (NWO), and as the Italian minister of Research and Italian Minister of Defense. He is editor of Sensors (MPDI), Applied Science (MPDI), and Journal of Sensors (Hindawi) and guest editor of Photoacoustics (Elsevier). Prof. Spagnolo is a program committee member of several SPIE and OSA conferences, a fellow member of SPIE, and a senior member of the OSA.

In his current role, Scott Domingue oversees Thorlabs’ engineering
group responsible for designing and engineering laser systems to suit the specific needs of the life science community. Having previously worked at KMLabs, whose Yb-fiber-based laser products are now a part of the Thorlabs product family, he developed a 3-photon laser system, the Y-Fi™ Optical Parametric Amplifier (OPA). Scott's work bridges the gap between the technologies developed in laser and biophysics laboratories and the real-world photonics needs of the life science community, with an emphasis on ultrafast imaging and spectroscopy. Scott holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Colorado State University, where he also worked as a Post-Doctoral Researcher developing a visible, two-color fs laser system along with a transient absorption microscope.