Next to the company founders, Dr Wilhelm Kaenders (also managing director Toptica Photonics) and Dr Frank Lison (managing director Toptica Projects), Armin Zach is now board member, responsible for research and technology. Toptica Projects has been spun-off from Toptica Photonics as a separate entity in 2016.

Zach has been one of the start-up members of Toptica Photonics already in 1998. He has spent his entire career in the laser industry, with deep experience in research and product development. He graduated in 1998 with a degree in biomedical and precision engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Ulm. During his diploma thesis at the chair of Prof Hänsch at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, he became enthusiastic about laser physics. So he joined Toptica Photonics, which was founded as a start-up company at that time. In the following years he worked in research and development of semiconductor lasers and ultrafast fiber lasers, where many of the company’s products originated. Subsequently, he headed the R&D department of Toptica for fiber lasers and frequency comb technology. As a co-founder of Toptica Projects, he has overseen the company’s R&D since its spin-off in October 2016.

Kaenders and Lison now welcome Armin Zach in the new leadership role: “The Toptica brand, as it is perceived globally today and the constant growth of the company, is driven by quite some part by Armin’s successful engagement over the many years that we have worked together.”

Zach is looking with great excitement to the new task: “The special spirit of the spin-off Toptica-Projects and the technology of the sodium guide star lasers have always thrilled me. What excites me most is the mixture of laser physics, astronomy and space technology all joined into the sodium guide star system. I am looking forward to working with Wilhelm and Frank and the entire Toptica Projects team in the exciting years ahead.”

Toptica Projects has currently twenty employees and its facilities in Martinsried (Munich), located close to the mothership. Its current staff is active for design, development, manufacturing, and support of our high-tech laser systems. This includes installations at customer sites in Chile, Hawaii and on the Canary Islands.

Further reading: Martin Enderlein & Wilhelm G. Kaenders: Sodium Guide Star (R)Evolution – A novel sodium guide star laser enables next-generation adaptive optics for ground-based astronomy, Optik Photonik 11(5), December 2016, pp. 31 – 35; DOI: 10.1002/opph.201600038