Optics startup wins prize
By Michael Wentzel

Democrat and Chronicle

(April 26, 2003) — A small optics company with links to the University of Rochester has won the inaugural Purdue University Life Sciences Business Plan Competition.
Iris AO, maker of tiny mirrors for adaptive optics, won the $50,000 first prize plus $10,000 in business and legal services. The technology is not a “one-hit wonder,” said G. Logan Jordan, a judge in the competition and a dean at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management. “There is conceivable value, not only in health care but in other sensing and optical applications as well,” Jordan said. David R. Williams, director of UR’s Center for Visual Science, said Iris AO is “leading the pack” in developing smaller, low-cost mirrors with a larger range of motion that will enable greater vision improvements. Nathan Doble, a post-doctoral researcher in Williams’ visual science lab at UR, expects to begin testing the company’s first working mirror next month at UR. Doble is one of the founders of the company, which is based in Berkeley, Calif. Iris AO also won two business plan competitions last year, earning more than $75,000 in prizes. “We have been boot-strapping and building the company off our winnings,” Doble said. “We now have orders and contracts, and we hope our new mirrors meet what industry needs.” The mirrors currently used in adaptive optic systems are about 3 inches in diameter and cost about $125,000. The goal of Iris AO is to make mirrors that are less than a half-inch in diameter and cost about $1,000 --but have better performance, Doble said. The adaptive optics technology developed by Williams and colleagues can be used to improve vision dramatically or detect eye diseases at a very early stage.

Adaptive optics initially was used by astronomers to improve images from telescopes by correcting for variations in the atmosphere. For the eye, researchers direct a beam of light into it and measure the light reflected out. The reflected light is broken up and sent to a sensor that analyzes the deviations caused by the cornea and lens. The system uses the measured deviations to change the shape of special mirrors that correct for the aberrations and produce clear images of the inside of the eye. Iris AO has developed a new generation of the so-called deformable mirrors and microelectromechanical systems to shape them. Surgeons, for example, can correct the deviations mapped by the system to reshape the eye and improve vision dramatically. Iris AO last year won the Berkeley Business Plan Competition. Participating teams in four years of previous competitions have raised more than $120 million in venture funding.

E-mail address: mwentzel@DemocratandChronicle.com