Company

Freedom Photonics LLC based in Santa Barbara, California is a wholly owned subsidiary of Luminar (Nasdaq: LAZR). The company was founded in 2005, with a vision to commercialize advanced semiconductor photonic component technology. We specialize in unique and innovative photonic components, modules and subsystems for a variety of applications. Our world-class technical team has a wealth of experience in successful design, development and volume manufacturing of semiconductor lasers, photodetectors and high-functionality, high performance photonic IC based products. Besides our standard off-the-shelf products, we supply many customers with private label and white label photonic products.

We operate from a 21,000 square foot manufacturing facility. Our facility contains multiple cleanrooms, for both manufacturing and engineering, and a full range of equipment needed for test, assembly and packaging of our products.

Our quality management system is registered to ISO-9001:2015 with NSF-ISR.

Dr. Milan L. Mashanovitch

General Manager (Luminar Semiconductor)

Dr. Mashanovitch is General Manager of Luminar Semiconductor for external business. He has over 25 years of experience in the photonics industry, combining technical depth with executive leadership in operations, strategy, and commercialization. At LSI, he has been instrumental in growing the business through strategic expansions (Princeton facility and former Argo AI team acquihire), acquisitions (EM4 in Boston) and business integration.

Milan was previously CEO of Freedom Photonics, which he co-founded and led through technology innovation, building of product portfolio, significant company and profitable revenue growth, and a successful acquisition by Luminar.

Milan has authored more than 150 publications, holds 15 patents, and has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Belgrade. He has chaired and participated in numerous technical conferences and is a regular invited speaker on various topics in integrated photonics. He holds a dipl. ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Belgrade in Serbia, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California in Santa Barbara. He completed the General Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2024.

He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Dr. Leif A. Johansson

Vice President of Advanced Technology

Dr. Johansson is the Vice President of Advanced Technology at Luminar Semiconductor, with responsibility to align new technology development with customer needs and revenue goals. This involves defining the company’s technology roadmap, working with key customers to translate their challenges into new technology and business opportunity, and to represent the company in customer meetings and industry conferences.

Leif was previously co-founder and CTO of Freedom Photonics, where he had the technological leadership role from the start of the business, growing the company while consistently maintaining profitability up to the successful acquisition by Luminar Technologies in 2022. Dr. Johansson has received his MSc at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University College London, UK.

Dr. Johansson has over 260 publications related to photonic integrated circuits and subsystems, including areas such as widely tunable lasers and transmitters, high power single mode lasers, radio-frequency photonics, optical processing, sensing and communications. He has given numerous invited and contributed talks at various international conferences, chaired or served on technical committees including IEEE Microwave Photonics Conference, Optical Fiber Communications Conference, Avionics Fiber-Optics and Photonics, and IEEE Photonics Conference.

Dr. Gordon B. Morrison

Vice President of Engineering

Dr. Gordon Morrison is the Vice President of Engineering at Luminar Semiconductor Inc., where he oversees research, development, and manufacturing engineering across three sites.

He has more than 25 years of experience in the field of photonics, working with companies across Canada, Europe, and the United States. His expertise spans the modeling, design, fabrication, and packaging of photonic devices, including DFB lasers, tunable lasers, high-power lasers, and photonic integrated circuits. He has also managed the production, testing, and qualification of semiconductor products in compliance with Telcordia Standards (GR-468 and GR-63).

Before joining Luminar, Dr. Morrison served as Vice President of Engineering at Freedom Photonics, where he helped grow the company and where he led multiple research and development groups and spearheaded the creation and expansion of the Quantum Sensing, Advanced Packaging, and Hybrid Integration technology teams.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Morrison held senior engineering and manufacturing roles at Avago Technologies and Cyoptics, where he contributed to major advances in the design, reliability, and manufacturability of DFB lasers, modulators, and external cavity tunable lasers.

Dr. Morrison has authored more than 100 publications and holds over a dozen patents in the areas of semiconductor lasers, photonic integrated circuits, photonics packaging, and atomic sensing. He earned his Bachelor of Applied Science (Honors) in Engineering Physics from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, and his Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. He was also an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Morrison is a Senior Member of the IEEE.