Our Team

Mesa Photonics Staff

Daniel J. Kane, PH.D.

CEO & Founder

Dr. Kane developed the FROG Scan product line and is the co-inventor of Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating (FROG), the most used technique for measuring ultrafast laser pulses. He has invented several techniques in spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography, and ultrafast laser pulse measurement and holds 11 patents and has one pending. He is the sole inventor of real-time measurement of ultrafast laser pulses using FROG and has patents on this technology (US# 7,130,052 and 8,068,230).

He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a B.S. in Physics from Montana State University. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratories (Group CLS-4), and spent 17 years at Southwest Sciences. Dr. Kane is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the recipient of SPIE’s Harold E. Edgerton award in 2011.

David S. Bomse, PH.D.

President

Dr. Bomse joined Mesa Photonics as President in 2009. He is also in charge of developing products based on optical spectroscopy for use in gas sensing and mid-infrared laser characterization. David has over twenty years experience developing trace gas detection technology based on diode lasers. Many of his innovations are based on adapting new components that were engineered for telecommunications for optical spectroscopy. This approach has proven to be an efficient and inexpensive route to gas sensing technology.

David holds a Ph.D. from Caltech, as well as a Masters from the University of Cambridge (England), and a Sc.B. degree with honors from Brown University; all are in chemistry. He was a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, worked for six years in Exxon’s Corporate Research Laboratory and spent 21 years with Southwest Sciences before moving to Mesa Photonics.

ANDREI B. VAKHTIN, PH.D.

Principal Research Scientist
Dr. Vakhtin joined Mesa Photonics in 2015. He has over 20 years of experience in gas-phase chemical kinetics, laser spectroscopy, laser-based sensors for trace gas monitoring, optical imaging methods for aerosol characterization, Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass-spectrometry, spectral interferometry and low-coherence imaging techniques for biomedical and material science applications.

He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry (Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion, Russia) and M.S. in Chemistry (Novosibirsk State University, Russia). He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at National Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research (Tsukuba, Japan) and at JILA (Univ. of Colorado and NIST, Boulder, CO), and spent 12 years working at R&D companies Southwest Sciences and Vista Photonics.

FRAUKE H. RININSLAND, PH.D.

Principal Research & Operations Scientist
Dr. Rininsland joined Mesa Photonics in 2019. She has 25 years of experience in genetics, cell biology, gene therapy, immunology, and biochemistry.

She earned her MSc at the Georg-August University of Goettingen, Germany, and then identified mutations in the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Regulatory (CFTR) membrane protein as a Deutsche Mucoviscidose Fellow in Toronto, Canada. After her return to the University of Goettingen, she earned her PhD by identifying and characterizing ectopic transcripts of the Duchenne/Becker Muscular Dystrophy genes and establishing non-invasive carrier diagnostics. As a Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, she joined Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, where she was a lead scientist for a human gene therapy trial for patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). She later studied immunology as an NIH Fellow before joining QTL Biosystems in Santa Fe, NM, where she became Director of Drug Discovery. At QTL she led the development of fluorescence-superquenching based HTS assays for kinase, phosphatase, and protease activities.

In 2008, she started her own company, Gyrasol Technologies, where she was the CSO and developed lysate activity based assays before she joined Mesa Photonics.

Mesaphotonics
DOE Grant
Anthony (Tony) Gomez, PH.D

Principal Research Scientist
Dr. Gomez joined Mesa Photonics in 2022 as Principal Research Scientist.   His current focus is the development and commercialization of instruments and methods for  measurement of gas phase species and aerosols using optical techniques.

Tony earned his PhD at the University of California, Irvine, under Dr. Sergey Nizkorodov in 2007, where he built a cavity ringdown system to study the photo-oxidation products of organic aerosols. Subsequently, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Sandia National Laboratories where he developed fiber optic based resonant cavities to measure species in microfluidic channels. While at Sandia, he also developed instrumentation for selective ionization and separation of inorganic aerosols for nuclear non-proliferation. Following his Postdoc, Tony worked at Southwest Sciences for 11 years developing scientific instruments.

KEITH WERNSING, PH.D.

Research Scientist
Mr. Wernsing joined Mesa Photonics in 2020 as a Senior Research Scientist. His areas of expertise include nonlinear ultrafast fiber lasers, multiphoton microscopy, and pump-probe spectroscopy.

He is currently completing his dissertation on super-resolved multiphoton microscopy, having performed his doctoral work at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, under the advisement of Dr. Randy Bartels.  During his doctoral work, Keith jointly developed ultrafast laser sources based on Yb:fiber technology and biomedical applications utilizing these sources.  Applications included impulsive stimulated Raman pump-probe spectroscopy and multiplexed single pixel imaging with multiphoton excitation.  The latter application, known as multiphoton spatial frequency modulated imaging (MP-SPIFI) was the first far-field biological imaging tool to simultaneously provide super-resolution to both coherent (SHG) and incoherent (fluorescence) scattering mechanisms.  Prior work at CSU inlcuded development of cryogenically cooled, diode-pumped Joule-class Yb:YAG laser amplification systems.

ADMINISTRATIVE
  • Suzanne Garney
  • Kirk Barnett

 

ENGINEERING & MANUFACTURING
  • Mark Medrud
  • Mario Montoya
  • Yaniksa Mata-Solis