Greg’s love affair with photonics, that is everything to do with light (light particles are called photons) began back in 1964 when he read a Daily Express article on the ruby laser which had been invented just a few years before. There was something about the ruby rod sitting within a helical spiral flashtube that must have struck some resonance in the 10-year old as lasers and flashtubes have since been a lifelong fascination.
Greg’s first job after leaving school with a clutch of “A” levels was at the Culham laboratory for fusion research where he got to work with high-power carbon dioxide lasers, both continuous wave and pulsed. His PhD was again photon-based, this time with photons in the infrared part of the spectrum. Working at the Philips Research Labs and taking an external PhD at the University of Surrey, the research was looking into Silicon-based materials that could be used for thermal imaging, that is imaging (using a CCD camera) in the near infrared part of the spectrum. Some years later Greg set up Parker Technology Ltd. in Abingdon, to manufacture and market high-power high-speed portable flashguns for Nature photography. He had developed these units over a number of years and had reached the point where they were ready for commercialisation. As luck would have it, within a week of setting up the company the supplier of a key component – the energy storage capacitor – decided that they weren’t going to manufacture them anymore!! I closed Parker Technology down before even selling my first commercial unit – and it was to be over 20 years before I returned to the technology.
Greg left Abingdon to enter the academic world and joined the Electronics Department at the University of Southampton in 1986. He became Professor of Photonics in December 2000 with his specialist research in the area of photonic crystals. It was this research that formed the basis of the spin-out company Mesophotonics Ltd. that he formed in July 2001. Although specialising in photonic (quasi)crystals, Greg’s research covers all aspects of Silicon-based photonics.
Silicon-based photonics at first sight appears to be an oxymoron since Silicon is perhaps the most optically “dead” material you could possibly come up with. However, as the vast semiconductor industry is based in most part upon Silicon technology, then it is really useful if you can somehow marry your photonic solution to the well tried and tested Silicon microfabrication technology – it will just make your life so much easier when it comes to creating a new product.
On April 20th 2009 a new EPSRC research project began at the University of Southampton. The 2-year programme is looking into suitable host materials for upconversion waveguide lasers (UWLs). UWLs are a class of laser that converts “cheap” infrared photons from a “workhorse” infrared diode laser, into “expensive” visible wavelength photons; and the conversion can be carried out at high efficiency! Watch this site over the next 2 years to follow the progress. Finding suitable host materials for this particular application will almost certainly result in the formation of another spin out company to manufacture and market this entirely new class of visible wavelength laser 
Venture Capitalists wishing to invest in this disruptive new laser technology should contact Greg on: