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Dive Into the New Age of Light

The Team

Vivek Raghunathan

Co-Founder and CEO

Vivek has over 15 years of experience in silicon photonics. He was a Sr. Principal Engineer, Product Architect and Program Leader for Integrated Silicon Photonics at Broadcom driving key core technology development required to co-package optics with switches and demonstrated industry’s first 25.6T Ethernet switch co-packaged with silicon photonics chiplets. Prior to joining Broadcom, he was a Principal Engineer at Rockley Photonics where he led silicon photonics product integration for their data-com product line. He started his career at Intel where he led next generation GPU to HBM interconnect technology development and the commercialization of their first Silicon-photonics-based transceivers. He received his PhD from MIT in Material Science and Engineering.

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Alexander Gaeta 

Co-Founder & President

Alex is a world leader in quantum and nonlinear photonics. He performed many of the key demonstrations of nonlinear optical devices in silicon photonics, including parametric amplifiers and optical frequency comb generators. He also holds appointments in the departments of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. He was awarded the Townes Medal in 2019 and is a Fellow of Optica, the American Physical Society, and IEEE.

Yoshi Okawachi

Co-Founder and R&D Lead

Yoshi has over 10 years of research expertise in Silicon photonics and optical frequency combs. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed journal papers and is a co-inventor on 6 patents. He is a Fellow of Optica, the 2017 Optica Ambassador, and is the recipient of the 2017 Tingye Li Innovation Price. He received his PhD from Cornell University in Applied Physics.

Samira Karimelahi

Silicon Photonics Team Lead

Samira has over 10 years of experience in the field of silicon photonics and high speed modulators for optical communications. This includes industrial experience where she worked on the key projects/products for data-center applications. She holds over eight patents and multiple awards including two innovation contest awards across Marvell Semiconductor. She received a PhD from University of Toronto in Electrical Engineering.

Ferdinand Mendoza

Principal Mechanical Engineer

Ferdinand has 10 years of experience designing data center equipment and optical communications products at Lumentum, Infinera, and Cerebras Systems. He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from San Jose State University.

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Asher Novick

Senior Silicon Photonics R&D Engineer

Asher has over 6 years of combined work experience in fiber optics and silicon photonics R&D and is the co-author of over 40 conference, journal, and patent publications in the field of optical communication and connectivity.  He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, leading the first-ever integrated Kerr comb-driven silicon photonic transmitter demonstration as a part of his work on silicon photonic interconnects and devices. Prior to Columbia University, Asher worked in Panduit’s Fiber R&D Lab, developing innovative optical solutions for customers’ data center and enterprise connectivity needs.

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Andres Gil Molina

Senior Photonics Engineer

Andres has more than 10 years of research experience in laser integration, nonlinear optics, Silicon photonics, and optical communications. He has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications and co-invented 3 patents. He worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University, where he led the development of a novel high-power electrically-pumped microcomb sources. Andres earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Campinas.

Keren Bergman

Co-Founder

Keren is a world leader on photonic interconnect architectures. Her work is foundational to reducing energy consumption in computing with optical data movement. Keren holds a faculty appointment in the Electrical Engineering Department at Columbia University. She is the recipient of the IEEE Photonics Engineering Award and is a Fellow of Optica and IEEE.

Michal Lipson

Co-Founder

Michal is a pioneer of silicon photonics. Several of her innovations are currently standard offerings in photonic foundries around the world, including microring modulators and nanotaper couplers. She is a co-founder of Voyant Photonics and sits on the Board of Poet Technologies. She holds appointments in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at Columbia University. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of Optica and IEEE.

Looking to join our team? 

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