The Company

Erik Scher is a serial entrepreneur and executive, who has spent the last two decades starting multiple venture-backed nanomaterials companies, in which he has had leadership roles. He specialises in taking novel technologies from concept to commercial products. He has previously worked in industries ranging from energy and petrochemicals to displays and specialty polymers in consumer products. Most recently he served as COO for Siluria Technologies Inc. (now Lummus Technology), where he oversaw R&D, IP, scale-up, and operations in Siluria’s commercial demonstration plant. Now, he serves as a board member as well as in various strategic advisory and executive roles at numerous companies, all of which are at different stages of commercialisation, ranging from inception to commercial product sales. Erik studied chemistry at Rice University, and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

David Schut is VP of Technology in Synexis Biodefense Systems (US), and has numerous years’ experience in product development for companies such as Shoei Electronic Material, Voxtel and HP, focusing on new quantum dots for optoelectronics. David Schut studied chemistry in Texas Wesleyan University and Oklahoma State University, and received PhD from University of Oregon.

Liberato Manna is the Deputy Director for Materials and Nanotechnology programs at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova (Italy). Dr. Manna has an extensive background in quantum dots, having received numerous major grants and been involved in many research projects. Previously, Liberato Manna was a postdoctoral fellow in University of California, Berkeley, and worked as a researcher in National Nanotechnology. Liberato Manna received his MS and PhD in chemistry from University of Bari, Italy.

Maksym V. Kovalenko is a Professor of inorganic chemistry at ETH Zurich, and also a researcher at Empa (Switzerland). His research group focuses on the synthesis of diverse quantum dot materials and other functional inorganic materials. Prior to joining ETH, Maksym Kovalenko was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, having received his PhD in chemistry from Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.

Omar F. Mohammed is an Associate Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He is an expert in optoelectronic devices, Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy and Four-dimensional Electron Imaging. His research is geared towards developing a fundamental understanding of charge carrier dynamics in a variety of optoelectronic materials, including semiconductor quantum dots, polymers and perovskite nanostructures with different dimensionalities. Prior to joining KAUST, Professor Mohammed was a senior research associate with Professor Zewail (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1999) at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA. Prior to his arrival in Pasadena, California, Dr. Mohammed spent more than a decade between Germany, Switzerland and Japan, embarking on the development of new laser spectroscopic techniques for direct observation of various chemical and physical processes in real time. Dr. Mohammed received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.