James is no stranger to lists of notable achievers. He received the Thermo Electron Corporate Award for Technical Innovation in 2002 and the first Newport Corporation Strategic Patent Award in 2007 for his patent of the first diode-pumped double-clad fibre laser.
Kafka has dozens of United States patents, contributed to scores of refereed journals and made presentations at probably more CLEO, Optica meetings, SPIE conferences and major universities than he would care to remember. This former Optica board member continues to innovate – one of his most recent patents has been a low-repetition rate infrared tunable femtosecond laser source. It’s a cavity-dumped low repetition rate infrared tunable femtosecond laser source configured to produce pulses of 200 femtoseconds or less with a peak power of four megawatts or more for use in a variety of applications including multi-photon microscopy.
The Spectra-Physics product portfolio, part of MKS Instruments, consists of a broad spectrum of lasers for precision industrial and scientific research applications and James remains the division’s distinguished CTO.
Organisation: MKS Instruments (Spectra-Physics)
Role: CTO
Based in: Milpitas, California, USA
Education: PhD in Optics, University of Rochester