The Luminate optics, photonics, and imaging accelerator named Jay Kumler, president of Jenoptik Optical Systems, to its national advisory board.

Luminate is a new $5 million per-year accelerator for OPI-enabled startups. The organization is formally accepting applications from prospective companies with visionary entrepreneurs solving challenging problems including but not limited to: machine vision, inspection, biophotonics, security, surveillance, augmented and virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles. Teams will be competing for one of ten available slots in the first cohort, guaranteeing them a minimum investment of $100,000, and potentially as much as $1 million. Luminate applicants must be incorporated, have a full-time team, should have proven their core technology, and preferably developed a working prototype.

“I am honored to be a part of this distinguished group of key industry leaders and to help facilitate the advancement the OPI industry,” said Jay Kumler.

“The addition of this group of world-class advisors will help improve the chances of Luminate companies ultimately succeeding. The board will participate in the recruitment, selection, coaching, networking and mentoring of the cohort. Each member of the advisory board has a passion for helping new entrepreneurs, and a wealth of knowledge that will guide our startups to spend their time avoiding mistakes, rather than fixing them. That kind of assistance is simply invaluable,” said Don Golini, advisory board chair.

For more information, visit www.luminate.org.