had carried out research in lasers for data communications at Bell Laboratories (the R&D arm of AT&T). Prior to establishing the company, James had managed the Optronics Ireland facility at Trinity College, Dublin whereas John went on to be appointed Trinity’s provost. Eblana was established out of a common desire to commercialise a scalable laser manufacturing technology which had the capacity to drive down the cost of high performance, single wavelength lasers for diverse mass market applications.