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LiDAR Space

Company

A laser company in Durham, New Hampshire

Background

LiDAR Space was founded in 2004 in Durham, New Hampshire. The company draws on more than two decades of experience in high-power diode lasers and alkali-vapor optical pumping, begun at the University of New Hampshire and continued in the company’s own laboratories.

Our team of roughly ten includes several Ph.D. physicists and engineers. We design and build our own pump modules, gain cells, resonators, pulsed-power systems, and diagnostics in-house.

Prior work has been funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Missile Defense Agency. The company is eligible for SBIR Phase III awards and is a member of the Joint Directed Energy Consortium (JDEC, managed by NSTXL).

Team

Nine members of the LiDAR Space team standing together in the laboratory.
The LiDAR Space team in the Durham laboratory, 2026.

Founder

Head-and-shoulders portrait of the company’s founder.

F. William Hersman, Ph.D.

Founder and CEO

F. William Hersman is the founder and CEO of LiDAR Space and Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of New Hampshire. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 and worked in experimental nuclear physics before turning to optical pumping of alkali vapors and high-power diode lasers. He began developing diode-pumped alkali lasers in 2011 and is an inventor on each of the company’s patents.