OptiGrate Celebrates Ten Years of Success

Orlando Company Transforms Bright Ideas into Real-World Products.

(Orlando, FL) – OptiGrate Corp (OG) is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. OG designs and manufactures a full range of volume Bragg gratings (transmitting – TBG, reflecting – RBG, chirped – CBG) in inorganic photosensitive silicate glass. OptiGrate formally changed its name in 2008 from Light Processing Technologies Inc.

“We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary with a team of 15 people whose hard work has transformed bright scientific ideas into real-world products. We are grateful to all of our customers who have supported us over the years, trusted in our products and capabilities, and helped us to become an award-winning company,” said Dr. Alexei Glebov, CEO.

Since its incorporation in 1999, OptiGrate has received the Florida High Tech Corridor’s first-ever “Award for Innovation in Central Florida” (2007) at the William C. Schwartz Industry Innovation Awards Banquet, hosted by the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission, and founder Dr. Leon Glebov received the Dennis Gabor Award from SPIE, an international society advancing light-based research, for discovery and practical implementation of photo-thermo-refractive glass as a new medium for recording high-efficiency volume holographic gratings (2008).

Leon Glebov, his wife Larissa Glebova, and his colleague Vadim Smirnov founded OG to commercialize the technology of volume Bragg gratings (VBG) in photosensitive glass. The foundation for the technology was developed in the 1970’s in the Soviet Union where Glebov and his colleagues discovered a photo-thermo-refractive effect and recorded first-ever VBGs in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass. With Glebov’s group of researchers at the University of Central Florida’s prestigious College of Optics and Photonics – Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (COP-CREOL), the technology was developed to the next level, enabling real-world application of VBGs.

“As it usually happens we went a long way from the first demonstration of PTR VBGs to fabrication of high-efficiency and low-absorption gratings that can be used in high power lasers or other applications,” said Dr. Leon Glebov, now Optigrate’s chief technology officer.

OG took the technology further. With federal funding the company developed the technology for implementation in a number of high-end military systems and started converting the government funded research into commercial products. In 2008, Dr. Alexei Glebov joined the company as President and CEO, bringing his extensive experience in the photonics industry to further push the VBG commercialization effort.

OptiGrate’s team was the first to fabricate commercial-level volume Bragg gratings, owns the first intellectual property on VBG technology, and continues to beat world records on the number of grating characteristics. “OptiGrate grew out of CREOL labs and was able to build up vertically integrated manufacturing and top class R&D facilities. Now we supply VBGs to a large number of defense, industrial and academic players in four continents. We look forward to what the next ten years will bring,” Dr. Alexei Glebov said.