Donald Barnhart

Dr. Barnhart is the Creator of Optica and Founder of Optica Software (a subgroup of Barnhart Optical Research LLC), where he has guided Optica's development for more than 28 years in addition to maintaining an active professional career as a principal-level optical scientist in areas of holography, flow cytometry, augmented reality, and DUV laser technology. He holds both a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, and a PhD in Opto-Mechanical Engineering from Loughborough University, UK. He is a founder of the holographic velocimetry discipline and inventor of the SlideOScope. Donald has had over 30 years' experience in the coherent optics industry.

Donald has published papers in the fields of holographic velocimetry, holographic recording in bacteriorhodopsin, and computer-generated diffractive optics. While living in England, Donald was once an invited guest to Buckingham Palace where he personally met with Prince Phillip and the Queen of England. He has authored over Six Patents in the fields of holographic velocimetry, augmented reality, automated optical alignment, anamorphic optics (SlideOScope), and speckle reduction. His areas of special interest include speckle reduction, computer generated diffractive optics, augmented reality device development, and of course, the continued development of Optica's optical modeling software tools.

As a graduate student, Donald started development of Optica in 1991 to build the first successful holographic camera that takes near-instantaneous three-dimensional volumetric velocimetry measurements at a million points of fluid flows at the University of Illinois. Three years later in 1994, after publishing his ground-breaking results, which appeared on the front cover of Applied Optics, Donald founded Optica Software with the first commercial release of the Optica package for Mathematica. In these intervening years, Optica has continually enjoyed a modest but loyal following of users in the optical sciences community.