Rays and Waves

Virtual, augmented, mixed, and extended reality form a proverbial alphabet soup of near-eye display technologies, each offering varying degrees of immersion and unique optical challenges. Before these futuristic displays reach our eyes, they rely on decades of foundational semiconductor history, precision microdisplays, and rigorous optical engineering.

In this episode of Rays and Waves, Daniel and Steven sit down with Karl Guttag, a living legend in semiconductor design and the voice behind KGOnTech, the premier blog for near-eye technology analysis. Recognized as Texas Instruments’ youngest-ever TI Fellow, an inventor on over 150 U.S. patents, and a founder of multiple tech companies, Karl is widely known today as the "Truth-Teller of AR Displays."

Karl’s engineering fingerprints are all over computing history. We explore his remarkable hard pivot from building foundational graphics hardware to mastering optics and microdisplays, as well as his perspective as one of the industry's most rigorous and pragmatic watchdogs.

This conversation dives into the past, present, and future of near-eye tech, hardware engineering, and what it really takes to bring functional AR and VR displays to life.

If you enjoy the show, share it with your colleagues, subscribe, and leave us a review! Got thoughts or questions? Reach out at rays.and.waves.podcast@gmail.com

Music is Good Vibe by Twisterium. Thanks for the great tunes!

During a lung biopsy, physicians must navigate a needle to a suspected lesion deep within the body, often with limited visibility of the tissue directly in front of the needle tip. What if they could see exactly where they were before taking the sample?

In this episode of Rays and Waves, Daniel and Steven sit down with Reza Khorasani, Founder and CEO of LEADOPTIK. During his postdoctoral work in Federico Capasso's group at Harvard, Reza helped pioneer metaoptics and metalenses through several influential research contributions. Today, he is bringing those innovations into the clinic through needle-based optical imaging systems that combine Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and advanced metaoptics to provide real-time visualization during lung biopsies.

We explore the optical engineering behind this remarkable technology, the challenges of translating cutting-edge research into medical devices, and Reza's journey from academia to building a fast-growing medtech startup with the potential to improve cancer diagnostics and patient outcomes.

If you enjoy the show, share it with your colleagues, subscribe, and leave us a review! Got thoughts or questions? Reach out at rays.and.waves.podcast@gmail.com

Music is Good Vibe by Twisterium. Thanks for the great tunes!

While massive interferometers orbit the earth or span kilometers to detect gravitational waves, the real workhorses of optical metrology live quietly on the benches of optical labs and manufacturing floors worldwide. These instruments are not measuring black hole mergers, but they are the reason the high-performance optics inside our semiconductors, aerospace systems, and consumer electronics actually work.

In this episode of Rays and Waves, Daniel and Steven sit down with Xavier Colonna De Lega, Director of the Innovations Group at Zygo. Since the early 1970s, Zygo has been so central to the field of optical metrology that its name has become practically synonymous with interferometry itself.

Xavier has spent his career shaping the instruments that verify the modern world’s most precise components. We explore the evolution of industrial metrology, how Zygo has scaled specialized research into essential production tools, and what it takes to measure surface flatness down to a fraction of a wavelength. It is a deep dive into the practical engineering that bridges the gap between theoretical optical design and large-scale manufacturing.

If you enjoy the show, share it with your colleagues, subscribe, and leave us a review! Got thoughts or questions? Reach out at rays.and.waves.podcast@gmail.com

Music is Good Vibe by Twisterium. Thanks for the great tunes!

A pair of binoculars might be the closest thing to a superpower you can buy. That is how a friend once described them while gifting a pair to his wife, and it is easy to see why.
In this episode of Rays and Waves, Daniel and Steven explore the surprisingly rich optical engineering behind binoculars. From magnification and aperture to prisms, coatings, and color performance, we follow the history of binoculars.
What seems simple is full of clever design trade‑offs. This episode connects everyday optics to fundamental engineering principles, revealing why small choices make a big difference in how we see the world.
If you enjoy the show, share it with your colleagues, subscribe, and leave us a review. Got thoughts or questions? Reach out at rays.and.waves.podcast@gmail.com
Intro music is Good Vibe by Twisterium. Thanks for the great tunes!

From Hubble’s breathtaking images to the deep infrared view of the James Webb Space Telescope, space-based observatories have transformed how we see the universe. They reveal black holes, probe dark energy, trace the birth of stars, and even let us study the atmospheres of distant planets, pushing astronomy into entirely new territory.
In this episode of Rays and Waves, Daniel and Steven sit down with Lee Feinberg, a true veteran of space telescope engineering. Lee joined NASA during the Hubble era and played a key role in diagnosing and correcting its original optical flaw, helping restore one of the most important scientific instruments ever built.
Lee then went on to spend more than two decades on the James Webb Space Telescope as Optical Telescope Element Manager. We explore the critical decisions that shaped Webb, from selecting beryllium for its segmented primary mirror to developing new ways to test a deployable telescope at cryogenic temperatures, as well as the "cup up" optical test configuration that made full system testing possible on the ground.
This conversation dives into the optical engineering behind humanity’s most ambitious telescopes and what it takes to build instruments capable of looking back to the earliest moments of the universe.
If you enjoy the show, share it with your colleagues, subscribe, and leave us a review. Got thoughts or questions? Reach out at rays.and.waves.podcast@gmail.com
Intro music is Good Vibe by Twisterium. Thanks for the great tunes!
Outro music by Lee Feinberg and fellow NASA engineers. Recorded back in the 90s!