Santanu Basu founded Sparkle Optics Corporation in 2002. Between 1979 and 2002, he worked at Raychem Corporation, IBM Research Center, MIT, Northrop and Boeing. At IBM Watson Research Center, he pioneered the demonstration of quantum well modulators on silicon. Later as a post-doctorate at MIT, Santanu was the first to observe gain in a transiently pumped collisionally excited extreme ultraviolet laser, which has now become a popular x-ray laser scheme. In 1993, he introduced slab laser technology to Northrop Corporation, where he produced lasers for underwater sensing. At the Boeing Company, Santanu was involved in the concept development and technology development for the space based laser IFX program.

Santanu enjoys being a productive member of the laser community and has made many original contributions. The list of first demonstrations include: (1) moving slab laser(1985), (2) diode-pumped mode-locked laser(1986), (3) injection mode-locking of a Q-switched laser(1987), (4) generation of x-rays using a train of mode-locked pulses(1987), (5) amplification of diode laser pulses in Ti-sapphire(1988), (6) pulse shaping of diode pulses by spectral filtering(1988), (7) conceptual design and demonstration of InGaAs multiple quantum well modulators on silicon(1989), (8) table top Ni-like soft X-ray laser(1992), (9) tunable DWDM demultiplexer(2001), and (10) conceptual design of a viable hundred kilowatt rotary disk solid state laser(1987). Some of these concepts and devices, which seemed impossible, are in widespread use today.

Santanu received a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT, India in 1978, a M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 1979, a M.S. in Mathematics in 1981, a M.S. in Applied Physics in 1984 and a PhD in Applied Physics in 1988 all from Stanford University. His work in lasers includes over forty publications, fifteen patents, issued or pending, chairing of four SPIE conferences on high power lasers, and teaching of the first SPIE course on slab lasers. Recently, Santanu was elected an SPIE fellow.