POET Technologies Inc., a designer, developer and manufacturer of optoelectronic devices, including light sources, passive wave guides, and Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for the data- and tele-communication markets, today announced that it had entered into an agreement with the highly-respected firm, MillView Photonics, Inc. (“MillView”) to establish a collaborative design center in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
MillView was established two years ago by Dr. Trevor J. Hall, Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Founding Director of the Centre for Research in Photonics at the University of Ottawa. Along with his team, which includes Peng Liu, senior passive component designer, Mihail Dumitrescu, senior active component designer, and supported by doctoral and postdoctoral graduate engineers, MillView serves clients in photonics research, simulation, design and process development.
The agreement between the two companies brings together in one lab the MillView team, including Dr. Hall, additional staff from MillView, and three PhD-level photonics engineers from POET. The team is also supported by POET’s Senior Vice President, Dr. William Ring, and additional POET design engineering resources.
Commenting on the collaboration agreement, Dr. Trevor Hall, a graduate of Cambridge University, noted, “MillView Photonics was founded along the same model as Cambridge Consultants where I worked on my return to Cambridge following PhD studies at University College London, U.K. Cambridge Consultants tapped into a vast reservoir of talent to solve real-world design and engineering challenges utilizing academic/industry partnerships. MillView is similarly situated to bring in the specific talent needed to address and solve a broad range of engineering challenges in photonics. We are all really gratified to be working as a team with POET Technologies. POET’s unique Optical Interposer™ platform has tremendous market potential, and we are all committed as one team to its success.”
POET’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, commented: “POET’s partnership with MillView rapidly expands our effort with experienced photonics engineering talent and substantial simulation and design capacity. In line with our stated strategy, we have assembled a team in one place dedicated to one goal – the design and development of waveguides and filters for our Optical Interposer platform. In addition, this places POET squarely in both a region and University where photonics design and development are vibrant and pervasive. The number of companies engaged in the photonics industry and the quality of the engineering talent available is extraordinary. We are very appreciative for the reception that Dr. Hall has extended to POET that allows us to function as one team.”
2019 TSX Venture 50
POET also announced today that the Company has been named to the 2019 TSX Venture 50 list, a ranking of the top performers on the TSX Venture Exchange over the past year. The TSX Venture 50 ranking is comprised of ten companies from each of the five industry sectors represented on the TSX Venture Exchange. Companies are selected based on three equally weighted criteria: market capitalization growth, share price appreciation and trading volume.
POET’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Thomas Mika, commented, “We are gratified to be recognized as one of the top technology companies on the TSX Venture Exchange for 2019. Last year was a transformational year for the Company, highlighted by our first orders for our POET Optical Interposer-based solutions from leading global communications companies targeting data communications applications. Additionally, we recently received an offer to purchase our DenseLight subsidiary as part of our plan to pursue a fab-light strategy with a less capital-intensive business model. In fact, today’s announced collaboration agreement with MillView for combining design capabilities also furthers these efforts by leveraging key strategic partnerships to establish POET as a world-class organization with leading optical products. We look forward to building on our growing momentum in 2019 as we realize the substantial commercial potential for POET’s technology.”