Hidden above Apeizza e Vino Pizzeria in sleepy Lafayette is Insight Photonics, staffed with two dozen world class optical physicists, one that even participated in Nobel Prize winning work at CU in 2001. They are working on the development of akinetic swept-wavelength lasers for Optical Coherence Tomography (looking at really small things). Their technology appears to have the potential to revolutionize a number of different vertical applications such as medical imaging, fiber sensing and even oil and gas exploration.
Human Skin - 20um isotropic resolution - taken with a 1550nm Insight Akinetic Laser - Image Credit - Medical University of Vienna
As I learned from the Insight team last week, historically nearly all swept-wavelength light sources have used mechanical means to move optical filter elements or microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) mirrors to tune the output wavelength. Given the need for moving parts, these systems are not only expensive but they also exhibit hysteresis, instabilities, or introduce extraneous reflections that produce noise and limit image quality. The Insight technology is based on what they call an "akinetic" laser. Akinetic means "absence of movement" and their laser is an all-semiconductor design that is electrically tuned meaning the only moving parts are photons and electrons. This means the Insight laser will follow Moore's law for silicon cost curve reduction and can be software controlled. It also opens up a whole host of new markets.
Insight Photonics Relationship Base
Their first main focus is in the area of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) in medical imaging. There are a large number of applications here including enhanced diagnosis of age-related macular degeneration, esophageal, breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancer diagnosis, guided implantation of artificial sight and dozens of others. They also have some really interesting opportunities in the area of fiber sensing for use in things like fracking of oil and gas wells. The company is still in the development stage but they already have an impressive list of clients and collaborators and even some sizable commercial contracts slated for first production delivery in 2016.
Their team is first-rate and built around optical physics talent developed right here in Colorado. Their CTO is Dr. Jason Ensher. He earned his PhD in physics at CU, where he worked together with Dr. Eric Cornell on the 2001 Nobel Prize winning demonstration of Bose-Einstein Condensation. After completing his PhD, he went on to a postdoc at University of Connecticut with Dr. Edward Eyler, and has since been a strong contributor in industry at ILX Lightwave, Precision Photonics, Ball Aerospace and InPhase Technologies - all in Boulder, by the way. The founder and CEO, Michael Minneman has 30 years of high-tech management and business development and has a way of blending strong technical depth with "layman level" descriptions of the innovations- a really necessary requirement in this type of endeavor. Their IP is based around science that was developed and licensed from Cal Poly SLO and they have over a dozen patents and patents pending.
In addition to management talent, they also have a strong group of investors and advisors that I have great respect for including Juan Rodriques (co-founder of Storage Tech and Exabyte), and Merc Mercure (founder of Ball Aerospace and CDM Optics - purchased by OmniVision in 2005). Merc is a true rocket scientist with a PhD in Physics from CU and we serve together on the Blackstone Board and if he and Juan are willing to put their own skin in the game on this then that says a lot about the credibility of the technology at the very least. Their key advisors include the head of photonics at USC, the dean of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, the head of EE at Cal Poly, and the heads of biophotonics at the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins, UT Austin and Texas A&M amongst others.
The company has been pretty frugal with their development to date being done with just under $8M of equity capital. They are raising a C round of financing currently and have closed over $900k of the desired $3-4M. They have an interesting "crowd sourcing like" approach to raising money, preferring to take smaller amounts from private investors rather than more traditional VC.
Insight is a new Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network company and definitely one worth watching. The fact they built the company around talent and expertise grown right here in Colorado is pretty cool too.
