Lambda Research Corp.: Establishing a Technology Bridge

Edward R. Freniere

On the 15th anniversary of Lambda Research Corporation—a privately held optics software company in Massachusetts—its president and CEO reflects on its founding, its funding and its flourishing business.

Lambda Research Corporation was founded in August 1992 with an idea for a product: modern, user-friendly ray tracing software for stray light analysis and radiometric and photometric analysis. The software would be capable of modeling many optical phenomena, including emission, absorption, specular reflection and refraction, scattering, diffraction and polarization. It would trace rays in a general manner using Monte Carlo techniques.

This idea was not based on market research, and my business partner and I did not seek or obtain start-up capital, venture or otherwise. There was no formal business plan, either—just the idea, based on personal experience, that the world needed this product, and somehow we would get it to market.

The bootstrapping method of starting a company requires a prodigious amount of work and nerves of steel. During the start-up phase, the company does not have any “cushion” of cash and always seems to be weeks away from going bust—at least from the founders’ perspective. The advantage, of course, is that the founders retain full ownership of the company. Many entrepreneurial companies are started this way. Only the strong ones survive.

Fortunately, I had the benefit of experience with the first Monte Carlo ray tracing software for stray light analysis and simulation of radiometric problems—GUERAP III— through my previous work at Telic Optics Inc. and other companies. When I left Telic to establish Lambda Research, I acquired this software in exchange for stock, along with two other products: SOAR for simplified stray light analysis and APEX for analysis of static interferogram images.

These three products became Lambda Research’s initial offerings. A short time compaafter its founding, the company released GUERAP V, an improved version with a menu-driven user interface. These programs ran on PCs under DOS, and have all since been discontinued.

We survived our first year through sales of these software products and consulting services. But we wanted to expand the company’s product line and provide new tools that would establish a technological bridge between optical and mechanical engineers. So, in 1993, we decided to explore funding opportunities through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is designed to stimulate technological innovations and provide opportunities for small businesses to research and develop their ideas.

We submitted a proposal to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in response to the solicitation subtopic “Techniques and methodologies to model, characterize and suppress stray light within an instrument.” The goal of the proposal was to develop a generalized Monte Carlo ray tracing program for stray light analysis, illumination analysis and radiometric analysis. It would be targeted to optical analysts and mechanical, optical and design engineers across a broad range of industries.

The main innovations were an easyto-use Microsoft Windows user interface, straightforward data exchange with leading CAD software by incorporating an industry-standard solid geometry engine (ACIS, from Spatial Corporation, now a business unit of Dassault Systemes), and easy importing of data from popular optical design software.

We were awarded a contract for Phase I, in which grantees must prove the feasibility of their concept. After having successfully completed that work, we were awarded Phase II funding to conduct further research and development. That grant allowed (and required) us to hire additional engineering personnel, and ultimately resulted in the roll out of TracePro in 1996.

The original purpose of the TracePro software was to detect and eliminate stray light in optical systems. However, it is also well suited for a wide range of analysis problems in imaging and non-imaging optics as well as illumination. Its broad applicability ensured its success; the product grew rapidly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and, in 2001, Lambda Research received the Laser Focus World Commercial Technology Achievement Award for TracePro. We also became a model for the best intended use of SBIR contracts, and were featured in the 1997 issue of NASA’s annual Spinoff magazine.

In 1995, we submitted another SBIR proposal, this time to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. We were granted a Phase I contract for developing software for “end-to-end electro-optical system modeling.” We completed the work and were awarded a Phase II contract, making us two-for-two in winning Phase II SBIR proposals! We never brought this technology to market as a separate product, but much of it was added to TracePro as new features, including the capability of using digital images as sources for tracing rays in TracePro.

Lambda Research grew with the success of TracePro. Over time, we discovered that customers wanted a product for the optical design and analysis of imaging systems. In 2000, we began discussions with Sinclair Optics Inc. to acquire OSLO, a leading software product for optical design. In January 2001, Lambda acquired OSLO from Sinclair, giving us a wider offering for customers seeking to design and analyze all types of optical and illumination systems. OSLO was acquired without outside capital, through “owner financing.”

Key to Lambda’s success has been our ability to react to the needs of the marketplace. By interacting with our customers and prospective customers, we have learned which new products and features are needed by the world’s design engineers. Through this process, many innovative features were added to TracePro, including the RepTile capability for modeling thousands or millions of microscopic features on optical diffusers.

The arrangement of these features is an important element in designing the backlights for liquid crystal displays so that they achieve uniform illumination. Other features we developed by gauging the marketplace include sophisticated modeling of blackbody sources, volume scatter and detailed modeling of fluorescence phenomena.

Customer input also led us to develop the TracePro Bridge for SolidWorks, which was introduced in 2005. The Bridge allows designers to leverage the mechanical design power of SolidWorks along with the analysis power of TracePro.

Software for engineering design and analysis must enable engineers to create innovative products, while not limiting them in their search for new designs. Effective development of this type of software requires continuous interaction between the software developers and the designers who use it.

Today, Lambda continues to advance its software products, and distributes its products worldwide through a network of resellers. We have 19 employees and maintain an office in Taiwan to provide technical support and training to the Asian market as well as development support to the home office in Littleton, Mass.

Software for engineering design and analysis must enable engineers to create innovative products, while not limiting them in their search for new designs.

[ Ed Freniere (ed@lambdares.com) is the president and CEO of Lambda Research Corp. ]