Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Prof. Dr. Nikolay Ledentsov, who founded and provided the seed financing of the company, invented and protected the key concepts of VIS GmbH and became its CEO on December 7, 2006 with the incorporation of the Company. He has an outstanding track record as entrepreneur, technology innovator and team leader. Educated as an Engineer in Opto-Electronics, he has more than 20 years experience in the semiconductor research and industry including Managing Director and Director Positions in optoelectronic companies. He was Professor at the Technische Universitaet Berlin and is at the Ioffe Institute in St.Petersburg, Russia (on leave), where he ran successfully multimillion-scale research and development projects. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the most cited active Russian scientist. He has authored 11 US patents, has won the Russian State Prize in Science and Technology, the Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the Young Scientist Award of the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors, and numerous other significant awards and recognitions. Nikolay Ledentsov is Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP).
George Schaefer is a recognized business development executive in the fiber optics components industry. He has a well-proven track record of driving companies large and small to revenue growth and market leadership. During his career he held several executive positions in Sales and Marketing in Europe and the USA. He spent more than 11 years with major technology companies including General Electric Automation in Frankfurt/M, Seiko Instruments (SII) Fiber Optics Division in Frankfurt/M and Infineon Technologies North America in San Jose, CA. Previously he served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Lumics GmbH a venture funded 980nm pump laser diode laser start-up company in Berlin, Germany. Prior to Lumics, Mr. Schaefer was the global Product Marketing Manager at Infineon for the 850nm VCSEL based highspeed interconnect product line PAROLI (parallel optical link). Mr. Schaefer holds a degree in electrical engineering from IHK Frankfurt/M, Germany. He completed studies in electrical engineering at the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany and holds a Master Degree in Business Administration from Rheinland-Pfalz School of Business in Mainz, Germany.
Dr. Lott holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of New Mexico (USA), both in electrical engineering. He has over 20 years of experience leading industrial and governmental research and development programs in photonics, microelectronics, and high volume integrated systems manufacturing. From 1988-1993 he performed research on epitaxy and quantum device structures at Sandia National Laboratories Albuquerque, which included the first demonstration of red light (620-690 nm) vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs). From 1993-2005 he served as Professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology with oversight of up to 40 department faculty members and as Director of the Micro/Nanotechnology Research Laboratory. While on sabbatical he served as a Visiting Scientist at the NEC Optoelectronics Research Center Tsukuba, Japan (1995) and at Samsung Electronics Company Suwon, Republic of Korea (1996) working on various aspects of laser diode design, reliability, integration, manufacturing, and consumer electronics applications. In 2006-2007 he worked for Intel Corporation on advanced manufacturing and reliability/failure analysis techniques. His research groups have focused primarily on the development of quantum well and quantum dot VCSELs and related devices, the integration of VCSELs with silicon BiCMOS and micro-electro-mechanical systems, and related vertically integrated systems technologies.
Dr. Joerg-R. Kropp received the doctor of science in the field of atomic physics with optical spectroscopy and laser applications. He gained over 25 years of industrial experience in the field of optical communications through various management positions with Siemens and Infineon, as well as director and owner of the InBeCon GmbH, an independent industry consultancy in the field of micro-systems technology. His field of experience includes the development of manufacturing processes for mass production of optical transceivers, the development of new generations of modules (such as the well-known parallel optical modules from Siemens PAROLI) as well as innovation and patent management and technology and IP analysis. In addition, Dr. Kropp actively participated for over 10 years in the development of various LAN standards of the optical Ethernet. Dr. Kropp is the inventor of over 40 patent families, with patents in different countries and author of numerous publications and technical contributions in the field of optical communications and micro-systems technology.
Dr. sc. Vitaly Shchukin is the co-inventor of VIS technology. He received his Ph.D and Doctorate of Science (Habilitation) degrees from the Ioffe Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia. He has authored more than 140 papers, 10 patents, and a monograph. He was a Leading Scientist at the Abraham Ioffe Institute and Senior Visiting Scientist at the Technische Universitaet Berlin. He has gained industry experience at NL-Nanosemiconductor GmbH working as a Principal Scientist and at PBC Lasers as a consultant. His research interests include the development of novel nanophotonic devices and the physical processes of the epitaxy of nanostructures. Dr. Shchukin was awarded with the State Prize of the Russian Federation for Science and Technology in 2001, and the Abraham Ioffe Prize in 1999 and 2002.
Prof. Dr. Dieter Bimberg received the Diploma and the Ph.D. degree in physics from J.W. Goethe Universitaet, Frankfurt/M., in 1968 and 1971, respectively. From 1972 to 1979 he held a Principal Scientist position at the Max Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Grenoble/France and Stuttgart. In 1979 he was appointed as Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Technische Universitaet Aachen. Since 1981 he holds the Chair of Applied Solid State Physics at the Technische Universitaet Berlin. Since 1990 he is the Executive Director of the Solid State Physics Institute of the TU Berlin. Since 2004 he is the director of the Center of Nanophotonics at the TU Berlin. His honors include the Russian State Prize in Science and Technology 2001, the Max-Born-Award and medal 2006, and his election to the German Academy of Natural Sciences Leopoldina and to the American Physical Society in 2004. He has authored more than 800 papers, patents, and books. His research interests include the physics of nanostructures and photonic devices like quantum dot lasers and amplifiers, wide gap semiconductor heterostructures and ultrafast photonic devices.
