John M. Guerra, P.E., President and C.E.O., founded Nanoptek in 2002.  He has guided the Company’s growth from the proverbial basement lab through competitive funding awards from N.A.S.A., U.S. Dept. of Energy, and Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust Fund to a successful Series A raise in 2007, resulting in this year’s rollout and commercialization of a family of significant products. Prior to Nanoptek, he was V.P. of Technology and G.M. of the Bedford, MA. lab of Calimetrics Inc., a company in Alameda CA., completing a N.I.S.T. Advanced Technology Program in high density optical data storage, as part of an industrial and academic consortium and in part with licensed nano-optical technology he developed at Polaroid.  Before his last position as Program Manager of Near-Field Optics Core Technology at Polaroid Corp., he developed numerous products over 23 years for medical, consumer, architectural, and computer imaging, culminating in the award-winning Photon Tunneling Microscope.  Licensing of two of his developments contributed significant revenue to Polaroid.   He also was Supervisor of the Optical Fabrication Labs and Optical Thin Film Lab.  John has 40 patents issued and pending, and 22 mostly peer-reviewed publications in journals including Science. He has given over 20 presentations, with invited talks in Sweden, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan, and was the Optical Society of America’s George Eastman Lecturer in 1991.  His work is cited in numerous texts and patents in the related fields of nano-optics and near field optics. He has won the R&D 100 Award, Photonics’ Circle of Excellence Award, and the Optical Society of America’s Engineering Excellence Award, as well as awards from Polaroid and Cambridge School Volunteers. The Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition recognized him in 2008 with an Outstanding Achievement Award for his “work toward a hydrogen economy.”   He is a biographee in Marquis’ Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Science, 3rd Edition, (1996-97), and Bowker’s American Men and Women of Science (1998).

Luke Thulin, Chief Scientist, joined Nanoptek in 2004, and has been key in the development of Nanoptek and its technology.  Luke first joined John at Calimetrics, where for over two years he developed several inventions in the field of nano-structured optical data storage, and subsequently has two patents and another patent pending, and several peer-reviewed publications in this field as well as in photocatalysis.  He subsequently obtained his Masters in Photonics Engineering from Boston University. In addition to his many generalist skills that are so critical to a small company, Luke possesses that rare combination of excellent experimental skills and superb theoretical analysis.  His most recent accomplishment is our visible light photocatalyst that is over an order of magnitude faster in degrading dye-class pollutants than the industry standard.

Amol Chandekar, PhD., Senior Principal Scientist, joined Nanoptek in 2007 after completing a Post Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, where he was also awarded his PhD. in chemistry with honors. For his undergraduate work, he attended Laxminarayan Institute of Technology, University of Nagpur, India, where he earned his B. Technology in Chemical Engineering.  Amol was instrumental in significant progress made while interning at Nanoptek in 2006.  He has eleven publications to his credit, many in the area of nano-scale patterning of materials, and a patent.  His most recent accomplishment is the development of the photoanode used in our solar hydrogen generators that is unique in its ability to absorb over the entire ultraviolet spectrum as well as some blue visible light, and with we believe to be a record-breaking conversion efficiency.

Andrei Ursache, PhD., Senior Principal Scientist, joined Nanoptek in 2007. As Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he obtained his Ph.D. in physics, Dr. Ursache developed capability for in situ EQCM (Electrochemical Quartz Crystal Microbalance), cyclic voltametry, and impedance spectroscopy of electrochemical cells. His expertise includes fabrication of nanostructured materials and devices by both lithographic nanofabrication and electrochemical processes, as well as advanced electrochemical characterization techniques.  Andrei has seven publications and a patent in this field. At Nanoptek, he is a valued “switch hitter” from researcher par excellance to product development engineer.  He has been key in our completion of product development for the concentrating solar hydrogen generators, specifically in designing and implementing the “command and control” system.

Advisors:

Dmitri Vezenov, PhD. Professor Vezenov is in the Chemistry Dept. at Lehigh University. He received his PhD degree in chemistry from Harvard University while working on the development of a new scanning microscopy technique – chemical force microscopy – to study intermolecular interactions between organic, biological and polymer surfaces at nanometer scale. This work was recognized by the Adhesion Society with the Peebles Award for research in adhesion science. He joined Polaroid Corporation’s media research department to work on optical near field storage systems. He later continued this effort at Calimetrics, and participated in the establishment of Calimetrics’ East Coast facility. He was responsible for the design and testing of the integral near field optics media (INFO), development of new microscopy techniques for characterization of the masters and substrates for the nano-optics, and oversaw the modeling effort in the design of the nano-optical media. As first employee at Nanoptek, Dr. Vezenov was a Principal Investigator on the Phase I NASA SBIR photolysis project, successful completion of which led to the Phase II grant. Dr. Vezenov is a co-author of 14 publications in scientific journals and several patents on nano-optics fabrication and tracking schemes for near-field media.