Experience: Our managing partner, Dr. Phipps, worked in the
inertial confinement fusion program at LLNL, where he invented the clamshell optics concept and an entirely new type of infrared Faraday Rotator based on interband transistions in germanium. He was a senior research staff
member in the Advanced Optical Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory
(LANL). There, he was part of the three-member team that created the SDI laser
effects test program. He has 25 years
experience measuring these effects during experimental campaigns at
Rutherford Appleton Lab, (UK), AFRL Kirtland AFB, NM, AFRL Wright Patterson AFB,
OH and at LANL. He is internationally recognized as an authority on the theory
and applications of laser interaction with materials, and has been a visiting
scientist in Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney. He developed two widely used models for
laser impulse prediction. He was Associate Director of the Alliance for
Photonic Technology at LANL. He is author of 230 refereed papers and conference presentations, including 40 invited
talks, editor of a book on laser ablation, and has been organizer and chair of
ten international symposia on High Power Laser Ablation. The American Institute of Beamed Energy Propulsion gave
him its lifetime achievement award in 2005.