Garrett Cole

Biography

Garrett D. Cole obtained his PhD in Materials from UC Santa Barbara in 2005 with his dissertation focusing on the development of novel MEMS-tunable vertical-cavity laser amplifiers. Since completing his doctorate, Dr. Cole has held positions ranging from the first employee of a high-tech startup (Aerius Photonics LLC, now FLIR Electro-Optical Components), to a postdoctoral position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Marie Curie Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and a university assistant in the Faculty of Physics at the University of Vienna. Dr. Cole has co-authored 2 book chapters and published more than 50 journal articles including papers in Science, Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Photonics, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Leveraging his expertise in micro- and nanofabrication, tunable semiconductor lasers, and cavity optomechanics, Dr. Cole, together with Professor Markus Aspelmeyer, founded Crystalline Mirror Solutions (CMS), an international photonics start-up commercializing high-performance optics for laser-based metrology and manufacturing systems. CMS was successfully acquired by Thorlabs Inc. in December 2019 and has been rebranded as Thorlabs Crystalline Solutions, adding our high-performance crystalline coatings to Thorlabs’ ever-growing product portfolio.