Dr. Wilhelm G. Kaenders

Wilhelm Kaenders isfounder and CTO of TOPTICA Photonics AG, a leading high-tech laser and photonics company, headquartered in Munich, Germany.
With more than 500 people, the company focuses on development and production for sophisticated, high-precision test and measurement laser tools for industry and academia. Wilhelm directs the company since its start in 1998 and has led as Vorstand/President the growth from a small start-up to a fully developed international operation including a US operation based out of Rochester, NY. TOPTICA’s core business addresses the research and emerging industrial application markets. The field of quantum technology, in particular the strongly emerging cold atom and ion physics activities, have been using the laser instrumentation developed by TOPTICA, documented in thousands of scientific user papers. Joint activities with the Optical Science Center in Tucson, AZ led to the development of static and dynamic optical disk test equipment. Driven by the print industry, laser technology was developed using blue laser diode technology in 2000 for direct structuring of silver and polymer-based printing plates. The development of ultrafast fiber lasers for biophotonics applications and powerful Sodium Guide Star Lasers for astronomical applications opened up other business lines recently which were recognized with the Leibinger (2016) and OSA Forman Award (2017).

Wilhelm received the diploma from Bonn and the International Diploma of Imperial College, London in 1989 for research in atom physics using synchrotron and laser-generated pulsed VUV radiation (inner shell spectroscopy on Yb and Mg). He then finalized a doctorate in Physics at the University of Hannover.
Wilhelm is an OSA and SPIE fellow, and has served on the Board of OSA as elected Director at Large from 2009-11. Since 2007, he is a member and since 2009 Chairman of the Fachbeirat “LASER. World of Photonics”, an industrial consulting body to Messe München, Germany.