Stanford Report, March 22, 2006

Comings & Goings

THOMAS M. BAER, a consulting professor of applied physics, has been appointed the first executive director of Stanford's Photonics Research Center, effective Feb. 15. Established in 2001, the center creates partnerships between campus researchers, many of whom work in lasers and optics, and private industry. Before coming to the center, Baer was chairman and chief executive officer of Arcturus Bioscience, a biotechnology company he founded in 1996. Arcturus develops and manufactures laser microdissection instruments and other products that allow precise genetic analysis of tissue samples. Baer is named as an inventor on more than 50 U.S. patents and is an author of about 50 scientific publications. He received his doctorate in atomic physics from the University of Chicago in 1979 and is a fellow of both the Optical Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.