S2 Corporation is a Bozeman, Montana photonics company that reads the radio spectrum the way a hologram stores an image - all at once. Its core technology, spatial-spectral (S2) holography, uses a cooled, sugar-cube-sized crystal doped with rare-earth atoms as an optical computer that captures and processes radio frequencies across enormous instantaneous bandwidths (0.03 to 110 GHz). Packaged as the Extreme Bandwidth Analyzer and Correlator (EBAC), the technology serves electronic warfare, signals intelligence, RF spectrum monitoring, emitter geolocation, and data mining for U.S. defense and intelligence customers including DARPA and IARPA.

Kris Merkel is the President and CEO of S2 Corporation, a Bozeman, Montana deep-tech firm turning rare-earth-doped crystals into an optical computer that watches the entire radio spectrum at once. A physicist by training and a patient operator by temperament, he has spent more than two decades pulling a niche piece of laboratory physics, spatial-spectral holography, out of Montana State University and into the hands of the U.S. Department of Defense, DARPA, and the intelligence community.