Gregory Quarles
Events
Gregory Quarles
CEO Emeritus and Board Member | Applied Energetics, Inc.
About the Speaker
Gregory Quarles is CEO Emeritus and Board Member at Applied Energetics, a Tucson, Arizona-based company at the forefront of ultrashort pulse directed energy and laser technologies for defense and national security applications. Applied Energetics' dual-use systems deliver compact, scalable directed energy effects designed to counter increasingly autonomous and electronically complex threats, including drones and advanced sensor networks, while requiring a fraction of the size, weight, and power of traditional continuous-wave laser systems. Gregory brings over 25 years of leadership in lasers, optics, and photonics technology development to the role, having previously served as Chief Scientist for The Optical Society (now OPTICA), where he led the organization's global efforts to represent the optics and photonics community across academia, industry, and government. He also served as CEO and Board Member at B.E. Meyers & Co., a pioneer in opto-electronic technology for defense and law enforcement, and has held board positions across nine organizations spanning optics and photonics corporations, education, research, and the not-for-profit sector, including current roles as Director at Large for OPTICA and on the boards of Nanocerex and Open Photonics. His career bridges the technical and commercial sides of directed energy — from R&D strategy and new product development to strategic turnarounds and M&A — giving him a rare, ground-level view of how laser and photonics innovation moves from the lab into fielded defense capability.
