John Taranto received his B.S. in physics and his M.S. in electro-optical engineering from the University of Dayton and has been working in the photonics industry for more than 35 years. After graduating, John worked for several government contractors. He was part of a team that built a 100+kW quasi-CW CO2 laser at the Laser Hardened Materials Evaluation Laboratory (LHMEL) facility at Wright-Paterson Air Force Base, OH. John joined Thorlabs in 1994 as a design engineer and has since enjoyed various roles within the organization. 

At Thorlabs, John had been the leader of the Fiber Optic Business Unit, after which he took on a role within the Advanced Systems Technology Group, focusing his efforts on adaptive optics-based imaging systems. When Thorlabs teamed with Boston Micromachines Corporation (BMC) to help offer their advanced MEMS-based deformable mirrors to the photonics research community, John developed algorithms that integrated BMC’s MEMS-DMs with a Shack-Hartman wavefront sensor into fully functional and affordable Adaptive Optics kits. Additionally, John integrated a MEMS-DM into a 2-photon microscope kit and supported a research project at Boston University where he was involved with the design and implementation of MEMs-DM based adaptive optics multiphoton microscope system. John has been with the Vytran division of Thorlabs since January 2019, after the acquisition of the fiber inspection product line from Norland Products, where he is focusing on technologies and algorithm development for fiber optic end face inspection and glass processing.