On the move

25 Apr 2006

A regular round-up of staff changes within the industry featuring CVI Laser, Umicore and ROFIN/Baasel Lasertech.

•  IRIDEX hires product innovation specialist

IRIDEX, a provider of medical lasers for eye treatment and cosmetic surgery, has appointed Deborah Tomasco as its new vice president of product innovation. Tomasco has more than 20 years experience in rapid product development and has spent the past seven years as a consultant. Previously, she worked at Lifescan, a developer of blood glucose monitoring systems, as program director, operations.

•  Jim Phelps promoted to vice-president of quality at CVI

Optical components firm CVI Laser has promoted Jim Phelps from the position of quality director to vice-president of quality. In this new role, he will coordinate CVI's quality initiatives on a worldwide basis. As quality director, Phelps established continuous process improvement teams as part of the ISO9001:2000 certification program and improved the firm's document control system. Prior to joining CVI, Phelps spent 18 years at Coherent and has also worked as optical systems production engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's NIF facility, US.

•  Lucent appoints Hitchcock as corporate controller

Lucent Technologies has moved David Hitchcock from business operations and finance vice president to the position of corporate controller. He succeeds John Kritzmacher who was appointed as chief financial officer earlier this year. Hitchcock joined Lucent's predecessor, AT&T, in 1983 and has held a wide range of financial roles supporting product and services segments, supply chain networks and corporate centres.

•  Geiger to manage new technologies at ROFIN / Baasel Lasertech

Stephan Geiger will join ROFIN/Baasel Lasertech in May to manage the firm's recently formed "New Technologies" business unit and will oversee the development of new laser sources and systems. Recently, Geiger was responsible for solid-state laser technology at Bavarian Photonics, a firm that he co-founded in 2002. Previously, he was vice president of research and development at TuiLaser, the parent company of Bavarian Photonics.

•  Umicore attracts respected CFO to complete executive reshuffle

Umicore, the Belgium-based materials specialist, has appointed Martine Verluyten as chief financial officer (CFO) commencing 1 June. She is currently CFO of Mobistar, a mobile phone operator and one Belgium's most successful publicly listed companies in recent years. At Umicore, Verluyten will take over the CFO role from Marc Grynberg who succeeds Martin Hess as excutive vice president of the company's automotive catalyst division. Hess will move across to Umicore's zinc specialities business as executive vice president, while also overseeing the firm's corporate development effort.