Dallas Quantum devices is a self funded boutique photonics company founded in October 2018 by Jim Tatum, Luke Graham, and Pritha Khurana.
The company focuses on providing unique laser and detector solutions to our customers. Collectivity the DQD team brings centuries of photonic design and manufacturing experience. Using an extensive network of premier outsource manufacturing partners, we leverage the very best state of the art processes and capabilities in our products. DQD has developed VCSEL epitaxial structures ranging form 650nm to more than 1000nm that have been fabricated into single mode, high power, and high speed devices. We specialize in providing highly customized VCSEL and photodiode solutions.
Looking for a career with us? Contact us to learn more:
Dr. Jim Tatum
CEO & Founder
Dr. Jim Tatum brings over 30 years of proven expertise in the field of VCSELs with a strong record of innovation, leadership, technology development and successful commercialization. Jim began his career at Honeywell in 1996 as a design engineer where he was instrumental in the development of the first commercial VCSELs.
He led the design engineering team that introduced VCSELs at speeds up to 4.25Gbps using oxide isolation technology. He then transitioned to strategic marketing for several years where he led the development of many optical communications standards and drove the use of VCSELs into more diverse markets. The Honeywell VCSEL group was acquired by Finisar in 2004, and in 2008 he took over the responsibility for development and productization of all VCSELs and SW Detectors at Finisar. Under his direction, Finisar successfully introduced VCSELs and detectors operating up to 28Gbps, single frequency VCSELs for atomic clock applications, and more recently high power 2D arrays used in gesture and facial recognition in consumer electronics. Many hundreds of millions of VCSELs have been shipped using design and manufacturing processes developed by his team.
Jim received his PhD in electrical engineering for the University of Texas at Dallas in 1995 and has authored many technical papers and application notes and holds more than 50 patents. The technical paper entitled VCSEL-based Optical Transceivers for Future Data Center Applications was recognized as the most cited paper in Journal of Lightwave Technology in 2015. In 2021, he co-authored the book VCSEL Industry: Communciations and Sensing which was recognized with the 2022 Wiley-IEEE Press Professional Book Award . In 2021, Jim was awarded the David Richardson Medal for significant contributions to the development and commercialization of VCSEL technology.
Dr. Luke Graham
CTO & Founder
Dr. Luke Graham brings over 25 years of expertise in VCSEL design and is well recognized in the industry for his skills and demonstrated success.
Luke earned his BS in Applied Physics from Cornell University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. His thesis work at UT Austin was on enhanced spontaneous emission in quantum oxide aperture micro-cavity structures.
Prior to co-founding Dallas Quantum Devices in 2018, Luke joined VCSEL startup Picolight in Boulder, Colorado in 1999 where he drove the development of 10Gbps 850nm communications VCSELs and parallel optical module design. He then led a team of epitaxy and process engineers as Director of Technology in the development of 1300nm VCSELs and optical subassemblies. Luke joined Finisar in 2010. As Staff Engineer at Finisar he was instrumental in the design and commercialization of high reliability InGaAs VCSELs for 14Gbps and 28Gbps. Luke was the lead designer on 2D VCSEL arrays for high power consumer electronics applications like 3D sensing and LiDAR. His work on VCSEL design and characterization was instrumental in bringing Finisar to a leadership position in high power VCSEL array space.
Luke holds several key patents in VCSEL design, has been author of many technical papers, and currently serves as committee chair in the VCSEL section at SPIE.
Pritha Khurana
COO & Founder
Mrs. Pritha Khurana brings 25 years of marketing and business leadership experience with proven success in technology socialization and driving profitable growth in diverse markets.
She joined Honeywell in 1998 as a VCSEL Application Engineer where she was instrumental in securing design wins for Honeywell VCSELs in Datacom and sensor applications. She was part of the team that created the business plan and strategy for future growth in new markets resulting in the purchase of the Honeywell division by Finisar in 2004. In the early years at Finisar she transitioned to marketing and profitably grew the VCSEL product line by developing and maintaining relationships with customers that were also Finisar module competitors.
Pritha then channeled her focus and energy in the development of a new business and market segment for Finisar. She engaged directly with strategic global customers, “selling” them on the Finisar value proposition and promoting the proliferation of VCSEL technology in 3D sensing, facial recognition, LiDAR, gesture recognition and other similar applications. Ms. Khurana has evangelized the use of VCSELs in consumer and automotive applications through technical workshops overcoming concerns about the use of LASERs in these new applications. She is well known to the technical and sourcing community worldwide in the 3D sensing industry and was instrumental in the business negotiation and successful design win with a major consumer electronics manufacturer. This design win resulted in a strategic shift and transformation of Finisar.
Pritha received a Master’s in Electrical Engineering in Photonics from McGill University in 1998.
Jim Guenter
CHIEF Scientist
Mr. Jim Guenter has been designing optoelectronics devices for over forty years. His early career with Honeywell involved LEDs, edge-emitting lasers, and detectors with wavelengths from the visible to the mid-infrared, and applications of those devices in fields ranging from medical to displays to military to communications. In the early 1990s he was tapped to lead the transfer of VCSEL technology from the corporate labs into manufacturing, an effort which led to the world’s first commercially available VCSEL in 1996.
For that effort he got the H.W. Sweatt Award and was made a Honeywell Engineering Fellow. His subsequent career was VCSEL-centric, concentrating on establishing their reliability and proliferating the technology into multiple application areas, earning several industry innovation awards in the process. He also served on the Honeywell patent committee for the next decade, and continued in both roles when Finisar acquired the Honeywell VCSEL division in 2004. He has been active in IEEE and SPIE conferences, in particular 2007 to 2017 he chaired the Photonics West VCSEL conference, the largest conference devoted to VCSELs in the world. In 2020, he retired from II-VI, which had acquired Finisar, and immediately joined Dallas Quantum Devices.
Jim’s undergraduate and Master’s degrees are both in physics, from Rice University and The University of Texas at Dallas. He holds nearly ninety US and two dozen foreign patents and has authored more than three dozen publications