About us

The OptiLayer thin film software consists of several modules: OptiLayer (evaluation and design of optical coatings), OptiChar (characterization of single thin films), and OptiRE (post-production characterization of manufactured coatings). All modules are compatible at the database level and can easily exchange data. A special DLL library OptiReOpt is designed to support optical monitoring of coating production.

The current trend in the further development of OptiLayer software products is to focus on the development of new user-friendly and production-oriented options.

The first version of OptiLayer appeared in 1992. Since then, the software has been permanently developed based on intensive fundamental research published in the most respected international journals. In 2014, OptiLayer GmbH was founded in Germany. Currently, OptiLayer software has many dozens of users in all corners of the world.

Prof. Alexander Tikhonravov – Founder. Professor Alexander Tikhonravov received a physical and mathematical education at the Division of Mathematics at the Faculty of Physics of MSU, member of Optical Society of America. He began working in thin film optics in early 1970s. In 1982, Professor Tikhonravov invented the needle optimization technique, a universal technique for designing optical coatings. This technique formed the basis of the OptiLayer thin film software.

Irina Levina – CEO, OptiLayer GmbH. She graduated from high school in Berlin and received her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Management education at Touro University.

Dr. Andrei Tikhonravov – Founder. OptiLayer has been led by Andrei Tikhonravov, who combines a scientific background in thin-film optics with more than two decades of experience in software development and technology management. From thin-film physics to software leadership – Andrei Tikhonravov graduated from the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University, Division of Mathematics, and went on to earn a Ph.D. there with a dissertation on light scattering in thin film coatings —. His scientific work in optics resulted in eight articles published in leading optical journals, including Applied Optics, Optical Interference Coatings (OSA Technical Digest Series), Proceedings of SPIE, and Optical Technologies and Materials. Andrei was the first CEO of OptiLayer, founded in 1999. He complemented this scientific foundation with formal business education, completing an MBA at the Graduate School of Business Administration of Moscow State University. Two decades in enterprise software and IT management – Before taking the helm at OptiLayer, Andrei Tikhonravov spent more than twenty years in information technology, over ten of them in top management positions across a wide range of industries — IT, energy, retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, oil and gas, and financial institutions. His career began in leading software development and business analysis at Scala R&D (Epicor Software), then headed the Financial IT Systems department at Amphora Group, before joining SAP as a Business Development Executive responsible for cross-industry consulting and sales. He subsequently served as CEO of IT companies delivering business intelligence, infrastructure, and IT security projects, and as Chief Information Officer of SGK and RTI, where he built and managed a centralised IT organization of more than 700 specialists serving over 12,000 users. As CTO of OptiLayer, Andrei Tikhonravov brings these two worlds together: a physicist’s understanding of the problems our users solve, and the discipline of building and shipping professional software at scale. Under his leadership, the OptiLayer suite has continued to develop as an integrated family of modules — OptiLayer Pro for the evaluation and design of optical coatings, OptiChar Pro for the characterization of single thin films, and OptiRE Pro for post-production characterization of manufactured coatings, together with the OptiReOpt Pro and OptiMonitor Pro supporting optical monitoring of coating production. The software has been modernized around performance and modern engineering practice: automatic parallelization, highly efficient computational algorithms, AVX instruction sets for modern processors, and the application of artificial intelligence, built on a technology stack that includes C++/SystemC, Rust, Python, PyQt, and NumPy.