POET TECHNOLOGIES - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Engineering
Subbu has had multi faceted experience in developing customised solutions, technology development to qualification and successful product ramps. He has over 30 years of Semiconductor experience with 25 years in Foundry Engineering including Global Foundries, where he was a senior Director responsible for Process Integration & Product Engineering. His career covered multiple tech nodes and platforms - Logic, HV, NVM, RF SOI & Silicon Photonics. He brings to us organisational and technical leadership with the ability to deliver value to the company and to customer alike. He is well versed with technology, Operations, Customer management, Business processes and Quality systems.
Subbu holds a Masters Degree in Industrial Physics from IIT Kharagpur, as well as a Masters Degree in Physics from University of Hyderabad. He holds 11 US patents and has published papers in technical journals.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Audit / Committee
- Chairman of Compensation / Committee
- Director
Mr. Tsiofas earned a Bachelor's of Commerce Degree from the University of Toronto in 1991 and has been a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario since 1993. He is a partner with the Toronto Chartered Accountancy firm of Myers Tsiofas Norheim LLP. Mr. Tsiofas has also been involved as an operating partner in various private enterprises over the years and is able to offer managerial and operational insight.
Job Titles:
- Vice President - Product Engineering
Dan Meerovich brings to POET 30+ years of experience in developing and manufacturing innovative photonics products at MACOM, Apogee (now Broadcom), Oclaro, Multiplex (now Hisense) and JDS Uniphase. As the Director of Product Engineering for MACOM's Lightwave Business Unit, he led the test, product and process engineering for lasers, photodetectors, AWG waveguides, optical engines and silicon photonic PICs. Dan developed the low-cost and scalable process of laser integration onto silicon photonic integrated circuits.
Dan has set up wafer fabrication facilities, run manufacturing operations at Multiplex and Xtellus (acquired by Oclaro) and built and managed a China-based manufacturing subsidiary acquired by Hisense. In addition, Dan set up and managed contract manufacturers to scale production of both high performance and low-cost optical modules. Earlier in his career, Dan led the development of photonic engines incorporating high speed lasers and EMLs, including the first uncooled EML module in a low cost TO platform. The company, Apogee, was later acquired by Cyoptics which was then acquired by Broadcom. Dan holds BSEE and MBA degrees from Rutgers University.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, New Product Development
Andy brings to DenseLight over 15 years of manufacturing & R&D experience in Optoelectronics & Laser Physics with focus on high power lasers, Fibre amplifiers & LIDAR. Prior to joining DenseLight, he was the CTO of iLuma Photonics, where he lead the development of award winning industrial laser products. He designed, developed and built manufacturing and production process from scratch, using lean & modular manufacturing methods. In addition to this, he was also worked with suppliers to ensure they met iLuma's stringent quality & reliability requirements. Before joining iLuma, Andy spend a number of years as a laser development engineer, spending time developing among other things, Red Energy Pulsed laser modules.
Andy has doctorate and a BEng Degree with 1st Class Hons from the University of Southampton, and in named as co-inventor in a number of patents.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, GM of Asia
Dr. Mo Jinyu is a highly experienced technical and business veteran of the photonics and optoelectronics industries. Her expertise covers optical transmission system, advanced optical modulation format, tunable semiconductor lasers, DFB and FP lasers and PD/APD, optical transceiver modules and high-speed integrated packaging. Dr. Mo has more than 22 years of experience spanning several companies, including MACOM Technology Solutions, Bookham/Oclaro, Huawei, I2R in Singapore and Nexvave Photonics Technology Co., which she founded and served as Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Mo was most recently with MACOM as the Senior Director and Chief Scientist of the Lightwave business unit in Asia and site leader in Shenzhen.
Dr. Mo received her PhD degree in Optical Communications from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore. She is a Senior member of IEEE and has been a member of IEEE's Technical Committees for several international conferences. She has over 11 patents and more than 40 papers published in tier one journals and conferences.
Job Titles:
- Inc. As a Consultant
- Vice President - Intellectual Property
Dr. Robert Ditizio joined POET Technologies Inc. as a consultant in 2017, assisting with the development of the Company's Intellectual Property portfolio for the Optical Interposer platform. Dr. Ditizio was appointed Vice President in December 2021. He brings to POET over 20 years of IP portfolio management expertise and an expansive knowledge of materials and semiconductor processing technology.
Prior to his work with POET Technologies, Dr. Ditizio played an instrumental role in the development of manufacturing and processing equipment for companies in the semiconductor industry, including plasma reactors and cluster tool platforms for advanced etching and deposition processes in a range of engineering positions, culminating as Chief Technologist of Tegal Corporation. In addition to equipment development, he also led the development of numerous semiconductor patterning applications including non-volatile memory etch applications, through silicon via applications, and compound semiconductor etch applications, among many others, and the development of deposition applications including CVD of polymeric films and pulsed CVD and ALD of barrier layers and complex stoichiometric films. Dr. Ditizio holds 10 patents in these areas and has published numerous technical papers. He holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Engineering Science from The Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from the Sonoma State University.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Board of Directors
Dr. Suresh Venkatesan joined POET Technologies from GLOBALFOUNDRIES where he served most recently Senior Vice President, Technology Development at GLOBALFOUNDRIES and was responsible for the company's Technology Research and Development. Suresh joined GLOBALFOUNDRIES in 2009, where he led the development and ramp of the 28nm node and was instrumental in the technology transfer and qualification of 14nm. In addition, he was responsible for the qualification and ramp up of multiple mainstream value added technology nodes.
Suresh is an industry veteran with over 22 years of experience in semiconductor technology development. Prior to joining GLOBALFOUNDRIES, he held various leadership positions with Freescale Semiconductor in Austin, Texas. Dr. Venkatesan holds over 25 US patents, and has co-authored over 50 technical papers. He holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and Master of Science and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Compensation / Committee
- Director
- Director of POET 's Board
Glen Riley was appointed as a director of POET's board in December 2020, bringing extensive and pertinent experience from a broad career in the semiconductor and optoelectronics industry spanning over 32 years. His most recent full-time role was General Manager of the Filter Solutions Business Unit in Qorvo responsible for developing highly integrated RF modules used in flagship mobile phones. Prior roles included managing director of the international headquarters for TriQuint in Singapore, general manager of TriQuint's GaAs foundry business, general manager of TriQuint's optoelectronics business, CEO of optical component start-up Opticalis, vice-president responsible for Agere's high-speed/long-haul optoelectronics business, and Asia sales president of Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group based in Tokyo. He has successfully led many global teams developing new products and growing profits in the RF wireless, GaAs foundry, optical components, and storage semiconductor markets.
Mr. Riley completed The General Management Program from the Harvard Business School in 1998 and graduated as valedictorian from the School of Engineering at the University of Maine with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1985.
Job Titles:
- General Manager
- Vice President
- Vice President & General Manager, POET Technologies Pte. Ltd
James Lee was most recently Vice President of Logic Technology at IMEC where he was responsible for defining the logic roadmap and developing the technology elements necessary to extend scaling with ultra-scaled FinFET, GAA devices, advanced metallization as well novel materials for emerging devices and quantum computing. James joined IMEC in 2015 where he was instrumental in driving collaborations with the foundries in China and was responsible for bringing in >100M euros of research partnership. Prior to IMEC, James had a 19-year career with GLOBALFOUNDRIES where he held various technical and management positions spanning the US and Singapore focused on developing, qualifying and ramping leading edge CMOS technology in the foundry. He has over 60 patents and holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Audit / Committee
- Director
Mr. Malinge serves as partner with ARCH Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm with nearly $2 billion under management. Additionally, he also serves as a managing director for YADAIS, a leading consulting firm in the photonics and telecommunications industries, and is a board member of Aeponyx, EGIDE SA and CAILabs. Aeponyx is a Canadian venture-backed company developing micro optical switches for tunable transceivers and optical circuit switches. EGIDE SA designs, manufactures and sells hermetic packages for the protection and interconnection of several types of electronic and photonic chips and CAIlabs is a venture-backed French innovative start-up founded in 2013 which has developed a unique spatial multiplexing platform. From 2004 to 2013 Jean-Louis was President and CEO of Kotura, a Silicon Photonics pioneer which was acquired in 2013 by Mellanox Technologies. Prior to Kotura Mr. Malinge was an executive with Corning Inc for 15 years. Jean-Louis hold an Executive M.B.A. from MIT Sloan School in Boston, Massachusetts. He also holds an engineering degree from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Rennes, France.
Job Titles:
- Controller
- Treasurer
- Vice President of Finance & Administration, Corporate Controller and Treasurer
Mr. Barnes has held increasingly responsible positions at POET since joining the Company in 2013, initially as a full-time consultant. In 2021, he added the title Vice President of Finance & Administration, retaining his roles as Corporate Controller and Treasurer. Prior to joining POET, Mr. Barnes served as Corporate Controller and Business Performance Manager for EC English, one of the world's largest language training institutes between 2006 and 2014. His international responsibilities included operations in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Malta. Prior to EC English, he was a reporting manager with Duguay and Ringler Corporate Services, which specializes in financial reporting for publicly traded companies. Mr. Barnes has also served as CFO of VVC Exploration Corporation, a minerals exploration company traded on the TSX.V. Mr. Barnes holds a Master of Business Administration and is a member of the Institute of the Certified Management Accountants of Australia and an Accredited Chartered Secretary.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Advisor to the Company 's Board of Directors
- Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University
Michal Lipson was first appointed as an advisor to the Company's Board of Directors in June 2022 and was elected as a director at the Annual General Meeting held on October 14, 2022.
Professor Lipson currently serves as a Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University. Her research focus is on Nanophotonics and includes the investigation of novel phenomena, as well as the development of novel devices and applications. Prof. Lipson pioneered critical building blocks in the field of Silicon Photonics, which today is recognized as one of the most promising directions for solving the major bottlenecks in microelectronics.
Professor Lipson is the inventor of more than 45 issued patents and has co-authored more than 250 scientific publications. In recognition of her work in silicon photonics, she was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also awarded the NAS Comstock Prize in Physics, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Blavatnik Award, the Optical Society's R. W. Wood Prize, the IEEE Photonics Award, and has received an honorary degree from Trinity College, University of Dublin. In 2020, she was elected the 2021 Vice President of The Optical Society and will serve as OSA President in 2023.
Job Titles:
- Chief Procurement Director of Arista Networks
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Audit / Committee
- Lead Independent Director
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Director of POET 's Board
Mr. Charbonneau was appointed director of POET's board in March 2018, bringing over 30 years of experience in venture capital and network infrastructure. He is currently the Chairman of POET's Governance Committee. As a general partner at Skypoint Capital Corporation for almost 15 years, Mr. Charbonneau was jointly responsible for the placement of $100 million of capital in early-stage telecommunications and data communication companies. Prior to Skypoint, he held a number of executive and operational roles at various networking companies, including March Networks and Newbridge Networks, where he was president and chief operating officer. In 2000, representing Sir Terence Matthews, he facilitated the purchase of the communications business systems division of Mitel Corporation, which has since operated as Mitel Networks. Mr. Charbonneau was Lead Director of Mitel Networks Corporation (NASDAQ: MITL and TSX: MNW) until its recent acquisition and currently sits on the boards of Teradici Corporation, the creator of the PCoIP protocol technology and Surgical Safety Technologies, Inc., a start-up headquartered in Toronto.
Mr. Charbonneau holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Ottawa and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Management Team
- President & GM
Rajan has over 28 years of global corporate experience spanning Asia, Europe and US. He brings a wide spectrum of knowledge in the semiconductor industry with demonstrated leadership in technology, operations and customer/product management with a strong focus on new product introduction, yield, quality and fab operations. Before DenseLight, Rajan was the President of GaNStar, a startup in the Gallium Nitride space. Prior to that, he was the VP of Global Quality at Micron Technology leading a team of 500+ people spread across 12 different countries with a clear focus on achieving "World Class Quality".Before Micron, he spent 18 years at GLOBALFOUNDRIES in various VP level in quality, operations, process/yield engineering and customer engineering. He started his career in R&D at Texas Instruments in Dallas, TX.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President - Product Line Management & GM USA
Raju brings over 20 years of experience in Optical transceivers, Optical components, Cloud data center and networks to POET. He was a Senior Director of Product Management at MACOM, focused on optical components and photonic solutions. Prior to that, Raju worked at Arista Networks as a Senior Product Manager and Engineering Manager. During this time he collaborated closely with data center customers to bring unique switching products as well as Optical transceivers to market, that helped customers deploy 40G and 100Gbps products for highly scalable and efficient networks. Raju worked as a Product Manager at Cisco prior to joining Arista. Raju started his career as an Optics Engineer at Opnext and later held various roles in sales and marketing at the company. Raju received his MBA degree from UC Berkeley (Haas School of Business) and completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics from BITS, Pilani in India
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Soma has +20 years of field experience in Opto-electronics, Datacom & Telecom. He held numerous sales as well as product and field engineering roles at Avago, Agilent and Hewlett Packard. Most recently, Soma led the sales activity in the South Asia Pacific region for CREE® , a leading global innovator of LED lighting, where he successfully identified and penetrated multiple new countries and implemented sustainable long-term growth strategies.
Soma has a B.Tech (Hons) degree in Electronics & Electrical Communication from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and an MBA from the University of South Australia.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Compensation / Committee
- Ende - Director
Ms. Lan Ende currently serves as Chief Procurement Director of Arista Networks. Before being named Chief Procurement Officer, she served for 10 years as Senior Director of Global Supply Chain Management. Prior to Arista Networks, she was the Vice President of Supply Chain Operations at JDSU Optical Division. During her tenure at Force10 Networks, she served as Director of Materials. At Cisco Systems and ROLM Telecommunications, a Siemens Company, Ms. LanEnde held various program management and planning management positions over a 20-year period.
In 2019, she was honored as one of the "Top 100 Women of Influence" by Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Job Titles:
- Advisor to the Company 's Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer
- Executive Vice President
Thomas Mika previously served as the Chairman of the Board of Rennova Health, the successor company to CollabRx and its predecessor, Tegal Corporation, a semiconductor capital equipment company. On the Board of Directors of Tegal since its spin-out from Motorola in 1989, Mika assumed the roles of Chief Financial Officer in 2002, CEO in 2005 and Chairman & CEO in 2006, positions which he held until 2015. In 2015, Tegal merged with Rennova Health with Mika retaining the position of Chairman until joining POET in November 2016. Previously, Mika co-founded IMTEC, a boutique investment and consulting firm, serving clients in the U.S., Europe and Japan over a period of 20 years, taking on the role of CEO in several ventures. Earlier in his career, Mika was a managing consultant with Cresap, McCormick & Paget and a policy analyst for the National Science Foundation. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.
Prior to Joining POET in late 2019, Vivek Rajgarhia was Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Lightwave Business Unit of MACOM (NASDAQ: MTSI). Vivek joined MACOM through the acquisition of Optomai Inc., where he was the Co-Founder and CEO, to start MACOM's first optical business. He was then instrumental in identifying and leading several strategic acquisitions to build an extensive portfolio of optical and photonic businesses, which formed MACOM's Lightwave Business Unit. Vivek has held several senior management positions during his 30 years in the optical communications industry. He was Director of Sales & Marketing (Asia) for Lucent Technologies' (now Nokia) optical components, where he started Lucent's Asia business; Vice President of Product Marketing and Business Development for OpNext (formerly Hitachi's Fiber Optics Division) where he was part of the team to spin-off the optical business from Hitachi; Director of Product Management & Marketing for JDS Uniphase (now Lumentum), and VP of Global Sales for GigOptix. Vivek has been a successful entrepreneur, founding two optical companies, and has held international assignments in Hong Kong, Germany and India. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.
Job Titles:
- Chief Technology Officer
- Member of the Management Team
- Loy Lam, Chief Technology Officer
Dr Lam received his B.Eng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (First Class Honors) and his MSc in Industrial Engineering from the National University of Singapore., and his MSE and Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, USA.
In 1985, he began his career with the Singapore unit of a UK-based multinational company in developing building automation products and subsequently establishing its manufacturing operations. From year 1990 to 2000, he was a professor in the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. Notable appointments in the University included Head of Microelectronics Division, Principal Staff Officer to the University's President, and member of the NTU Council (University's Board of Governors).
In Year 2000, he led the founding of DenseLight Semiconductors and raised a US$31.2 million VC Round from 3i-PLC (to establish a InP Optoelectronics Wafer Fab), and subsequently in 2003-2004 (despite negative market sentiment post 2002 photonics-crash) he raised US$8.6M to realize self-sustaining business operations by 2005 with revenue from products and services for its photonics sensing and test customers. He continued to serve as DenseLight CTO after the company was acquired by POET Technologies in May 2016.
Dr. Lam's area of technical expertise is in optoelectronics, fiber-optics sensors, and photonics systems applications, and has contributed to some 300 publications and 60 patents. For the past 25 years, he has been a significant participant in a number of key initiatives to promote the growth of photonics-related research and industrial development in Singapore; and he is still doing so today.
Prior to co-founding DenseLight Semiconductors, Dr Chan was professor in NTU and was the coordinator of the university's Photonics Research Group. He managed the university's photonic devices fabrication Lab and within a short span of 2.5yrs, expanded facilities into a cluster to service industrial programs and published more than 180 scientific and industrial papers.
Dr Chan brings deep expertise in industrial device fabrication development, component structural design, opto-electronic epitaxial and grating re-growth. With experience dating back to University of Tokyo, Dr Chan did the then pioneering work developing the tensile strained quantum well growth technique on GaAs for polarization insensitive optical modulation. In NTU, he won many industrial funding programs and led large-scale project teams for photonics device research and manufacturing fabrication. These programs include epitaxial growth by MBE, MOCVD and LPE and characterization of quantum well structures, laser diodes, optical modulators, photo-detectors and PICs. His accomplished experience in leading fabrication teams resulted in DenseLight owning significant structure fabrication competence IP and the capability to rapidly rollout PIC product.
Dr Chan pursued his education as a distinguished Public Service Commission Monbusho Scholar and received his B.Eng, M.Eng and PhD degrees in Electronics Engineering majoring in Optoelectronics, all from the University of Tokyo in Japan.