The areas of expertise at Max-IR Labs cover both instrument development and materials engineering, as is necessary for the development and analysis of the company’s patented and patent-pending sensing solutions.
Max-IR Labs is a woman-owned business founded in 2017 by Dr. Katy Roodenko in Dallas, Texas.
Dr. Roodenko leveraged her experience in infrared (IR) methodology and analytical instrumentation to initiate the development of leading-edge technology and products. Dr. Roodenko gathered an experienced
management team to develop a novel sensor for liquids using infrared
spectral analysis.
The team has developed strong collaborative relationships with leading industrial partners and universities in the fields of infrared optics, analytical chemistry, microbiology and the related characterization metrology.
Dr. Roodenko is the founder of Max-IR Labs. She has over 20 years of academic, industrial and entrepreneurial experience related with the development of infrared technology for civil and defense applications. She received her MSc degree from Tel-Aviv University in 2004, where she worked on the development of Scanning Near-field Infrared Microscopy in the group of prof. Katzir. She obtained her PhD degree from TU Berlin in Germany, developing novel infrared techniques and optical models for thin-film analysis.
In 2008 she joined the group of prof. Yves Chabal at UT Dallas and continued to pursue her career in semiconductor materials and the development of infrared technologies for gas sensing and thin-film characterization. In 2012, she joined IntelliEpi to work on industrial production of III-V compound semiconductors for optoelectronic applications using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Team leader and business strategist, she drives disruptive technologies to markets. Dr. Roodenko has over 30 publications in leading scientific refereed journals, as well as patents and book chapters.
Dr. Robbins leads business development efforts for Max-IR. He has over 43 years of experience in the semiconductor and technology industries and has held a variety of management and executives roles, including responsibilities over multiple fabrication facilities for mixed-signal ICs as a Vice President at Texas Instruments. Dr. Robbins has been involved in various early stage technology companies as an entrepreneur and has demonstrated success in recruiting talent, defining products and technologies and managing companies’ operations.
He holds a Ph.D. in Solid State Physics from Arizona State University and 11 issued U.S. patents. His academic research involved the use of Raman spectroscopy to study and model the electron-phonon interaction associated with defects in insulators. He is responsible for understanding system-level applications and customer requirements, and working with the team to help assure the development work is aligned with meeting those requirements. In addition, he provides the operational experience and guidance for overall project and logistics management.
Dr. Kevin Clark is heading Max-IR product development and is an IR and materials specialist. Dr. Clark has worked at IntelliEPI, Inc. as a Senior Scientist in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) from 2008 to 2016. His responsibilities included project lead and epitaxial film growth and characterization. Formerly, he was a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Texas at Arlington (2001-2008) working on MBE growth and fabrication of III-V and II-VI heterostructures on Si. Dr. Clark developed the growth of AlGaAs solar cell p-n junction containing GaAs quantum wells grown on BeTe buffer layers on silicon substrates.
He was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Texas at Dallas (1997-2000) working on MBE growth and fabrication of resonant tunneling structures. Dr. Clark received his Ph.D. in Physics from Texas A&M University in 1997, and his BS in Physics and Mathematics from Oregon State University in 1988. Dr. Clark has experience with MBE growth of QCL structures and subsequent fabrication, operation and characterization of QCL test-devices.
The list below is a continuously updated list of papers mentioning Max-IR Labs products and/or written by us. The list contains research works which have gone on record as developments in the optical field and are public domain. For more information, please contact us using our form.
Katy Roodenko; D. Hinojos; K. Hodges; B.-J. Pandey; J.-F. Veyan; K. P. Clark; D. I. Robbins Presented at Photonics West 2020, published in SPIE Digital Library on February 2020 We report on the development of infrared sensor for monitoring of nitrogen as nitrate, nitrite and ammonia in municipal wastewater.
Efficient nitrogen removal is one of the key objectives of any municipal wastewater treatment operation, yet today, nitrogen is monitored through grab-sampling and sending samples to laboratories for analysis. Max-IR Labs sensor will enable reliable, real-time, unsupervised sensing in harsh environment.
B.-J. Pandey; K. P. Clark; F. Abbas; E. Fuchs; K. Lascola; Yamac Dikmelik; D. Hinojos; K. Hodges; D. I. Robbins; M. Platkov; A. Katzir; A. Suliman; G. Spingarn; A. Niguès; J.-F. Veyan; Q. Gu; K. Roodenko. Presented at Photonics West 2020, published in SPIE Digital Library on February 2020. The paper presents Max-IR Lab's efforts to develop scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) method for thermal imaging with subwavelength spatial resolution
The system implements infrared fiber-optic probes with subwavelength apertures at the apex of a tip for coupling to thermal radiation. The SNOM-on-a-fork system is developed as a capability to profile temperature in from objects that emit radiation in pulsed and continuous wave (CW) modes, targeting diagnosis of failure mechanisms in microelectronic devices.
Farhat Abbas; Binay J. Pandey; Kevin Clark; Kevin Lascola; YamacDikmelik; Dennis Robbins; David Hinojos; Kimari L. Hodges; Katy Roodenko; QingGu
Presented at Photonics West 2020, published in SPIE Digital Library on February 2020
In this work, diagnosis of failure mechanisms of mid-wave infrared(MWIR) QCLs was performed based on 3D anisotropic steady state heat transferanalysis combined with Max-IR Lab's infrared scanning near-field opticalmicroscope (IR-SNOM).
K. Roodenko; D. Hinojos; K. Hodges; J.-F. Veyan; Y. J. Chabal; K. P. Clark; A. Katzir; D. Robbins
Presented at Photonics West 2019, published in SPIE Digital Library on February 2019
The paper discusses implementation of the development of a non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) detector for the real-time monitoring of nitrate, nitrite and ammonia concentrations targeting implementation at municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS)
DALLAS, May 17, 2018 - Max-IR Labs, an optical sensor development company based in Dallas, Texas, today announced it has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant of $225,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue its development of a novel real-time optical sensor for nitrate detection in water and soil.
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We are always eager to hear from recent (and not so recent) MSc/PhD graduates who are familiar with QCL technology and will help us drive its applications in gas and fluid analysis!
