OXFORD, UK— Adlens, a technology company specializing in variable focus eyewear, has promoted Rob Stevens, PhD to chief technology officer, a newly created role in the company. As CTO, Stevens leads a team of scientists, engineers and designers who have created two new variable focus products, set to launch by the end of 2013.

Since joining the company in 2008 as technical director, Stevens has been instrumental in the development of its two existing technologies: Fluid-Injection, currently in the John Lennon and Hemisphere lines and Alvarez, currently in the Emergensee collection. Under his leadership, the team has been named inventors of all 110 patents held by Adlens, based here.

“Rob is a critical part of our company’s mission to change the way glasses are used around the world through innovation, technology and engineering,” said Michael C. Ferrara, CEO and executive chairman of Adlens. “Rob is at the helm of the most exciting advances our industry has seen in decades. Glasses are increasingly recognized as the next big category of innovation, we look forward to supporting Rob and his team on their journey to develop the eyewear of the future.”

Before joining Adlens, Stevens served as technical director at PS Research LLP, a company targeted at providing state of the art optical diagnostics in automotive and petrochemicals with the overarching objective of improving combustion emissions. Prior to that, he spent eight years in research at Oxford in Nonlinear Optics and Laser Diagnostics, lectured in Physics at Jesus College Oxford, and spent four years at Pitney Bowes where he conducted a tour of duty on three continents between product development, quality, sales and marketing and IT.