Company

Freedom Photonics LLC based in Santa Barbara, California is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quantum Computing Inc (Nasdaq: QUBT). 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 – Photonics

Dr. Mashanovitch is General Manager of Photonics division at QCi. Previously, he was 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. Gordon B. Morrison

VP Photonics Engineering and Technology

Dr. Gordon Morrison is the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at Photonics division of QCi. Previously, he was the VP of Engineering at Luminar Semiconductor Inc., where he oversaw 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.

Don Kebort

Engineering Fellow / Site Manager

Don Kebort is an Engineering Fellow and currently the site manager at Freedom Photonics, a QCI company. Drawing on 25 years of experience across the full optoelectronic product lifecycle—from design through qualification and volume manufacturing—he leads the Subsystems Development group as well as the manufacturing department at the Santa Barbara site.

As leader of the subsystems group at Freedom Photonics, Don has overseen the design and implementation of the Instatune™ fast-tunable laser module family and manages the team responsible for electrical control and interface of laser and photonic integrated-circuit modules. Don’s subsystem group works closely with cross-functional development teams to ensure seamless integration of control electronics with new laser and PIC designs. As head of the Santa Barbara manufacturing department, he successfully guided the organization through ISO 9001 recertification and continues to lead the product-engineering team that monitors yield and labor efficiency.

Prior to joining the Freedom Photonics team, Don held several positions with increasing responsibility at Agility Communications, Inc. and later JDSU (Lumentum) where he concentrated on the design of widely tunable laser modules and supported the test infrastructure through HW/SW design and implementation. Don worked as a Test and Reliability engineer for Kaai, Inc. where he was responsible for developing test systems for accelerated aging of InGaN lasers as well as designing and executing reliability experiments that drove device improvements. Don has also gained experience on the “Dark Side” by developing high switching frequency, highly efficient motor drive and photovoltaic inverter applications showcasing non-photonic GaN power devices developed by start-up company Transphorm, Inc.