LAB2FAB

Workshop 2022

Speakers

Shedding Light on Innovation | 2022 Workshop

Alan Renaudin, Jr. Eng., Ph.D.

Director, Business Development, Strategic Partnerships and Marketing
C2MI

Alan Renaudin is a business development director at C2MI, Strategic partnership and Marketing and IEEE Entrepreneurship manufacturing resources lead. Entrepreneur at heart and intrapreneur on the field, he was previously involved in the Photonic business as an entrepreneur with a strong background in lab-On-chip applications and he holds a doctorate in microelectronics.

Passionate about driving the deep tech industry into a new era of innovation ecosystem, Alan focuses on accelerating the development and commercialization of microelectronics components enabling digital technologies. Confident that a collaborative ecosystem, involving international industrial, governmental, and academic players is key to accelerating commercialization, he is unfolding a world-class network, based on C2MI team, partners, and collaborators, dedicated to the maintenance of a market driven dynamic and rigorous expertise.

Alireza Loghmany, PhD 

Engineering Team Leader (CPFC)
Advanced Electronics and Photonics Research Centre
National Research Council Canada

Dr. Alireza Loghmany joined National Research Council Canada in 2014 where his extensive technical knowledge of GaN HEMT device physics, design, processing, and characterization was vital to the success of the Gallium Nitride program at Advance Electronics and Photonics Research Centre. Alireza subsequently joined CPFC in 2016 to help AEP’s successful partnership with Canadian companies. Shortly after, He became the CPFC Engineering Team Lead in 2019 where Alireza and his team have been responsible for client interactions in the AEP Portfolio, develop and maintain all of the CPFC fabrication processes and ensures client deliverables are properly executed.

Alireza received his Masters and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal, where his research was mainly focused on design, microfabrication, and characterization of Gallium Nitride based High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs).

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Alissa M. Fitzgerald, Ph.D.

Founder & CEO A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates, LLCT
A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates, LLC

Dr. Fitzgerald founded A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates, LLC (“AMFitzgerald”), a MEMS product development company located in the Bay Area of California, in 2003. She has over 25 years of engineering experience in MEMS design, fabrication and product development. Having developed more than a dozen distinct MEMS devices, such as piezoresistive pressure sensors, ultrasound transducers, and infrared imagers, she now advises clients on the entire cycle of microelectronic product development, from business and IP strategy to supply chain and manufacturing operations. Prior to founding AMFitzgerald, Dr. Fitzgerald worked in engineering and management positions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Sensant Corporation, now part of Siemens. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Dr. Fitzgerald is an author of MEMS Product Development (Springer, 2021), has numerous journal publications, and holds nine patents. She is a member of the SEMI-MSIG Standards Committee and served as a board director on the MEMS Industry Group (MIG) Governing Council from 2008-2014. In 2013, she was inducted into the MIG Hall of Fame. She is currently a board director of Rigetti Computing and of the Transducer Research Foundation.

Andrew Fursman

Co-founder and CEO
1QBit

Andrew Fursman is a Co-Founder of 1QBit and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Andrew was a Co-Founder of Satellogic Nano-Satellites, and Co-Founder of Cloudtel Communications. Andrew sits on the World Economic Forum Computing Futures Council and the IEEE Quantum Computing Standards Committee. Andrew is a fellow at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia, as well, a faculty member at Singularity University.

Ben Wiltshire

Modeling & Test Senior Engineer
Zinite

Ben Wiltshire joined Zinite in 2021 as a senior engineer working on testing and modelling devices at the nanoscale level.  He graduated from University of Alberta in 2013 and 2017 with BSc. Engineering Physics and MSc. Electrical Engineering, respectively.  He finished his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2022 on the topic of microwave sensor analysis, with a special interest in integrating semiconductive materials for sensing applications.  He was awarded the NSERC Canadian Graduate Student Scholarship from 2019-2022 and has published over 30 journal and conference articles.   

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Chiara Alessandri

Sales and Application Engineer
Luceda Photonics

Chiara obtained her master degree in Physics with summa cum laude at Università degli Studi di Milano in 2015 with the thesis “Production and characterisation of high speed graphene-based broadband optical modulators” carried out at imec (Belgium). She continued the work started with the master thesis during her PhD in the silicon photonics group at imec, where she was the main researcher focused on graphene integration in silicon photonics. In 2020 she received the Doctoral Degree (PhD) in Photonics Engineering from Ghent University with the thesis entitled “Graphene-Silicon Photonics Integrated Devices for Optical Interconnects”. After her PhD, she joined Luceda Photonics as application engineer to take up the challenge of putting her technical skills into practice and combining them with soft skills necessary for a customer-facing job. She has since taken over the role of product marketing manager, overseeing Luceda’s marketing efforts, including market research, positioning and messaging. She also guides customers through the technical sales process, gives regular individual or group trainings to teach how to design using the IPKISS Photonics Design Platform and creates training material and PIC design tutorials on Luceda’s online learning hub, Luceda Academy. In 2020, she started Luceda’s partnership with SiEPICfab and has since coordinated Luceda’s relations and contributions to the consortium.

Clint Landrock, M.A.Sc. 

Vice President, Technology & Innovation
Meta Materials Inc.

Clint is a BC technology and business leader with global experience and winning track record of leading multi-disciplinary teams from start-ups through to mature product suppliers. Areas of expertise include advanced optics, nano-fabrication, holography, anti-counterfeiting and currency security. Clint co-founded NanoTech Security Corp., and acted as its Chief Technology Officer growing the company from a small start up to nearly $10M per year in revenue within 5 years. Nanotech was acquired by Meta Materials for $91M CAD in 2021.

 

Collin Twanow

Director, Technology
Teledyne MEMS

Collin Twanow serves as Director, Technology for Teledyne MEMS and is responsible for matching technical solutions to the fabrication need for both current and existing customers. He joined Micralyne in 1999 and has held a number of roles ranging from Development Engineer, Director of R&D, Product Line Manager, and Vice President of Sales and Engineering in the Edmonton, Canada fab.

 

Collin has managed development programs for many devices including optical telecom switches and silicon optical benches, implantable medical devices, MEMS microphones, pressure sensors, and components for military applications. He is a Professional Engineer with a MEng degree, focused on Microfabrication. Collin has also lectured in MEMS and microfabrication courses at the University of Alberta.

David Buckley

VP, Development Engineering
Sanmina (Advanced Microsystems Technologies Division)

I have been the VP of Development Engineering at Sanmina Advanced Microsystems Technologies Division for almost three years. My engineering organisation specialises in Optical, RF, Microelectronic and Integrated Solutions engineering development, and associated process engineering and test development. We help customers realise their product vision – from concept through to volume manufacturing.

 

I grew-up in Wales and went to university in England. I graduated from the University of Bath with a B.Sc. in Engineering (RF and Control Systems) and a Ph.D. in the Design of High Power Semiconductor Lasers. (I must confess I chose Bath because of its excellent sports program… but ended up loving technology and appreciating what an excellent school it was!)

 

My first job was in the design of quantum, semiconductor lasers at STC in England. Nortel Networks acquired STC in 1989 and in the ensuing years, I moved to Ottawa, Canada (1997) to continue my career at Nortel. Following 14 years of a variety of engineering and business roles, I caught the technology bug and worked in Canadian technology start-ups and small/mid-sized businesses where I broadened my engineering and business experiences. Some of my engineering experiences include Plasmon Guide Optics at Spectalis, early-stage Planar Lightwave Circuits at Kymata Canada, NanoFab applications at Micralyne and RF systems at Dragonwave. These broadened my “operational engineering” capability …looking at ways to deliver engineering programs and technologies. Despite the roller-coaster of a ride in technology development, I am still as excited about different technologies and their applications as the day I started in industry.

 

At a personal level, I love living in Ottawa. When I get the opportunity, I like to get out into the countryside with my wife and dog and do some photography… or just chill in my back garden with a BBQ fired up, a beer in-hand and my family around me.

Dominic Marchand

Director Special Projects, Director 1QBit Sherbrooke
1QBit

Dominic is Director of 1QBit Sherbrooke and Director of Special Projects at 1QBit, a Canadian leader in quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). The company builds value at the intersection of industry and emerging hardware and it takes a broad approach to building its R&D roadmap by melding expertise in classical AI and optimization with quantum technology.

He played a key role in the integration of 1QBit into the hardware innovation and quantum ecosystems in Québec and the continued deepening of its connections to the Québec innovation zones and its stakeholders.

Dominic studied computer engineering and physics at Université Laval, Universität des Saarlandes, and the University of British Columbia before joining 1QBit’s newly created research team.

Gord Harling

President and CEO
CMC Microsystems

Gordon Harling received a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Science from the University of Toronto and a Maîtrise en Ingénierie Physique from Polytechnique Montréal. He has worked in Research and Development at large companies such as Mitel, NovAtel, and DALSA. He has been a founder and CEO of several start-up companies including Goal Semiconductor, Elliptic Technologies, and Innotime Technologies. He joined CMC Microsystems in February 2018 as President and CEO.

Gem Shoute

Co-Founder and CEO
Zinite
Gem Shoute co-founded and is CEO of Zinite. Zinite builds leading edge semiconductor technology unlocking 3D architectures for future chips. She received her PhD at the University of Alberta in solid-state electronics, and did her post-doctoral fellowship at Berkeley Labs/U.S. Department of Energy where she worked on the semiconductor innovation ecosystem in the post-Moore Era.

Hamid Arabzadeh 

Chairman, President and CEO
Ranovus Inc.

Mr. Hamid Arabzadeh has been the Chairman and CEO of Ranovus Inc., a leading technology provider of photonic interconnect solutions for AI/ML workloads in hyper scale data centres since its inception in 2012.

 

Prior to Ranovus, Mr. Arabzadeh was the Chairman and CEO of CoreOptics Inc. in Nuremberg Germany, an innovative provider of digital signal processor based photonic subsystems for high-capacity metro and long-haul optical networking applications.  CoreOptics Inc. was acquired by Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) in 2010.

 

Prior to CoreOptics, Mr. Arabzadeh held various senior management positions at Nortel Networks in Mexico, Brazil, and England.  Mr. Arabzadeh’s last role at Nortel Networks was VP & GM of Next Generation Metro Optical business unit.

 

Since his return to Canada in 2010, Mr. Arabzadeh has co-Founded and co-Founded several Canadian scaleups in fields of Security and Healthcare with an eye to benefit Canada in a competitive Data and IP driven global economy.

 

Mr. Arabzadeh holds a B.A.Sc. from University of Waterloo in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an MBA from McGill University.

Lukas Chrostowski, PhD

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of British Columbia

Lukas Chrostowski is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Born in Poland, he earned the B.Eng. in electrical engineering from McGill University and the PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. With research interests in silicon photonics, optoelectronics, high-speed laser (VCSEL) design, fabrication and test, for applications in optical communication systems and biophotonics, he has published more than 200 journal and conference publications. 

He co-edited a book “High-Speed Photonics Interconnects” (2013), and co-authored the book “Silicon Photonics Design” (Cambridge University Press, 2015).  Dr. Chrostowski served as the co-director of the University of British Columbia AMPEL Nanofabrication Facility (2008-2017).  He is the Program Director the NSERC CREATE Silicon Electronic-Photonic Integrated Circuits (Si-EPIC) research training program in Canada, and has been teaching numerous silicon photonics workshops and courses since 2008.  

He spent his 2011-12 sabbatical at the University of Washington, Seattle, with Michael Hochberg’s group. Chrostowski received the Killam Teaching Prize at the University of British Columbia in 2014.  He was an elected member of the IEEE Photonics 2014-2016 Society Board of Governors and serves as the Associate VP of Education (2014-).  He was awarded a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Accelerator Supplements Award in 2015.

Martin Laforest, PhD

Director, Quantum Strategy
ACET

Dr. Martin Laforest is the Director of Quantum Strategy for the Sherbrooke Quantum Innovation Hub and the deep-tech incubator ACET Banque Nationale. Martin has developed a career communicating the complexity and strategic impacts of quantum technologies to key stakeholders, including government, the media, the general public and industry partners. Martin recently moved to Sherbrooke to lend his diversified experience for the development of an ambitious quantum ecosystem. He is also currently establishing a venture capital investment fund focused on supporting young quantum startups.

Prior to moving to Sherbrooke, Martin worked at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo where he lead the first quantum science outreach effort which is considered the gold standard for many academic institutions. Martin then experienced the startup world by joining ISARA Corporation, a quantum-safe cybersecurity company first in business development and then in product management.

Martin Hold a PhD in quantum computing from the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing.

Philippe Babin

CEO
AEPONYX Inc.

Philippe Babin, CEO of AEPONYX, has over 27 years of experience in product and market development in the telecommunication field. He co-founded AEPONYX Inc and leads the company, having raised to date over forty million dollars in equity and non-dilutive financing. With his team, he develops and brings to market photonic integrated circuits and products for a broad range of applications.

Philippe holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in Business Administration from the University of Sherbrooke. Mr. Babin began his career in 1994 with C-Mac Microcircuits Inc. as a Process Engineer and subsequently, he held various management positions, including Director of Substrates Manufacturing, contributing to the 600% growth in revenues of one the most profitable business units of the EMS division, delivering millions of telecom products per year.

Philippe Babin joined Mediatrix Telecom, a division of Media5 Corporation, in 2001 as Head of Research and Development. Within this company, he successively head Product Line Management, Sales Engineering, Sales and Marketing, for finally being appointed as General Manager, where he operated a complete business turnarounds. Before joining AEPONYX, Mr Babin started in 2012 his own sales and marketing agency in the field of telecommunications and IT.

Rick O’Connor

President & CEO
OpenHW Group

Rick O’Connor is President & CEO of the OpenHW Group a not-for-profit, global organization driven by its members and individual contributors where HW and SW designers collaborate in the development of open-source cores, related IP, tools and SW such as the CORE-V Family of open- source RISC-V cores. Previously Rick was Executive Director of the RISC-V Foundation which was launched by Rick in 2015.  Today, under RISC-V International, the RISC-V ecosystem consists of more than 400 members building an open, collaborative community of software and hardware innovators powering processor innovation. With many years of Executive level management experience in semiconductor and systems companies, Rick possesses a unique combination of business and technical skills and over Rick’s career, he was responsible for the development of dozens of products accounting for over $750 million in revenue. Rick holds an Executive MBA degree from the University of Ottawa, Canada and is an honors graduate of the faculty of Electronics Engineering Technology at Algonquin College, Canada.

Serge Ecoffey

Associate Professor
Université de Sherbrooke

Serge Ecoffey is an Associate Professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Université de Sherbrooke in Canada. He earned a master’s degree in material science and a PhD in electrical engineering from the EPFL – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. He holds a C2MI research chair in microfabrication and integration and his research focuses on the development of chemical mechanical planarization processes, 3D back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) nanoelectronics, electron devices, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), heterogeneous integration, microfabrication and process integration.

He was a member of the Process and Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Logic Technology sub-committees of the IEDM International Electron Devices Meeting.

Vallen Rezazadeh

Founder and CEO
TransEON Inc.

Vallen Rezazadeh is the founder and CEO of TransEON Inc., an Edmonton startup developing next-generation wide-bandgap semiconductor technology for wireless applications in the telecom, defence, and space industries. He received the B.Sc. degree in engineering physics and the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering with a specialization in solid-state electronics from the University of Alberta. Prior to founding TransEON, he oversaw in-line test and electrical metrology operations for IBM Research at their 300mm fab in Albany, NY, USA, where he was involved in the development of advanced processes including 5nm CMOS and MRAM.

Volker Sorger

President and Co-Founder
Optelligence Company

Volker J. Sorger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of the Devices & Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the George Washington University. Dr. Sorger is a co-founder and the President of Optelligence Company. For his work, Dr. Sorger received multiple awards including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the AFOSR Young Investigator Award (YIP), the Hegarty Innovation Prize, and the National Academy of Sciences Award of the year. He is a Fellow of Optica (former OSA), a Fellow of the German National Academic Foundation, and a Senior Member of IEEE and SPIE. Dr. Sorger serves as an Associate Editor for OPTICA and was the former Editor-in-Chief of Nanophotonics.

SPEAKERS

Session 1: Innovating at nanofabrication labs

Session 2: Positioning for commercialization and scale-up

Session 3: R&D Challenges: stories from the trenches

Dino Deligiannis
Intlvac Thin Film

Behraad Bahreyni
Simon Fraser University

Session 4: Bridging discovery to production

Alan Renaudin
C2MI

Ken Brizel
ACAMP

Session 5: Strategies for achieving high-value outcomes

Dan Sinai
IBM Canada

Speakers

Sven Achenbach
Professor, University of Saskatchewan;
SyLMAND, Canadian Light Sourc
.

Sven Achenbach (M’11) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. (1996) as well as the P.D. (2000) degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
Following several Research Assistant positions and a research stipend at the National Research Center CNRS-LURE, Paris, France, he was a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Research Center Karlsruhe, Germany (2000 to 2003), focusing on deep X-ray lithography process technology. In 2003, he was awarded a tenured Research Scientist position at the Institute of Microstructure Technology in Karlsruhe. In 2005, he assumed an Associate Professorship in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2009 and was appointed as a TR Labs Adjunct Scientist. His research interests include instrumentation and process development for polymer- and metal-based micro- and nano devices and applications such as RF-MEMS, optics, and micro/nano fluidics. In the past decade, he has conceptualized and developed the Synchrotron Laboratory for Micro and Nano Devices (SyLMAND), Canada’s deep X-ray lithography facility at the Canadian Light Source CLS, where he is a Beam Team Leader and Principal Investigator. He is the author of a book chapter, a patent, and more than 60 articles.
Dr. Achenbach was the recipient of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe “Excellent Young Scientists” award and tenured position (2003) and was appointed as the Canada Research Chair in Micro and Nano Device Fabrication (2005-2015).

Simon Doe
National Facility Manager
Australian National Fabrication Facility
(ANFF-SA)

Simon is currently both the National ANFF Manager and the Facility Manager for the South Australian node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility.

Established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) is a world-class micro and nanofabrication facility and provides academia and industry with access to more than 500 state-of-the-art micro/nanofabrication facilities spread across 21 Australian locations.

For more than a decade, ANFF has been enabling research through a mixture of training, expert support and direct access. From proving principles to producing prototypes, the network is helping to bring about new generations of:
• medical devices,
• materials,
• electronics,
• photonics,
• and more.

Prior to joining ANFF, Simon has worked in several industries across materials and welding engineering

Jane Fitzpatrick
Chief Operating Officer
Australian National Fabrication Facility
(ANFF-SA)

Dirk Ortloff
Department Manager
camLine

Dr. Dirk Ortloff works as a Product Manager XperiDesk for the camLine GmbH in Petershausen, Germany. The independent software vendor provides solutions in the area of production and development automation, data management, integration and statistical assessment (MES, SPC, OEE, PDES) for electronics, semiconductor and photovoltaics industries. Previously he co-founded Process Relations GmbH in 2007 where the original XperiDesk product had been developed. Dirk Ortloff is a specialist in Innovation Management Methodologies and supporting software systems. In 1995 he received his diploma in computer science from the University of Dortmund and undertook, next to his managerial engagements, a doctorate in 2006. His current focus is on improving innovation management through methods, techniques, and tools in several high-tech industries.

Mohammadreza Rezaee
Co-founder & CTO
Aurora Quantum Technologies

Mohammadreza received his Ph.D. in 2015 from University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2015. He is postdoctoral fellow at Max Planck – uOttawa Centre for extreme Quantum Photonics. Priror to that he was at the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering and Physics Department at Texas A&M University, where he set up and operated a laboratory for quantum nanosensing. Prior to his doctorate work, he earned his BS in Atomic Physics from Shiraz University and his Master’s in Photonics from Shahid Beheshti University in Iran.

In 2017, he started a quantum technology company in Toronto, Canada in pursuit of his dream of turning pure physics into high-technology products. He joined the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) and its quantum machine learning program to learn the fundamentals of business development and improve his entrepreneurial skills. He completed CDL’s program in 2018. As CEO and co-founder, he led his venture to participate in the Y Combinator startup accelerator program in the winter of 2019. Upon the completion of the prestigious accelerator program in Silicon Valley, he returned to Canada in order to further develop the core technologies of the startup.

His mission is to accelerate the commercialization of quantum technologies. He is interested to find technological applications from his laboratory research. He is fascinated by the promises and power of quantum computation. He has established social groups and organized events raising awareness of quantum technologies while educating the public on their opportunities and threats.

He loves nature and everything it has to offer. He hiked the Appalachian trails and camped around the Smoky Mountains for years. He loves kayaking, canoeing, and watersports in general. He has enjoyed many kayaking experiences in Tennessee and Kentucky over the years.

Robert Wolkow,
Professor,
University of Alberta

Robert Wolkow is a Professor in the Department of Physics, iCORE Chair of Nanoscale Information and Communications Technology at the University of Alberta and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is also the Principal Research Officer and Nanoelectronics Program Coordinator at the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT), AITF Industrial Chair in Atom Scale Fabrication and CTO of Quantum Silicon Inc. He received his BSc from the University of Waterloo, his PhD from the University of Toronto and did postdoctoral work at the IBM TJ Watson Research Centre before becoming a staff scientist at Bell Laboratories. He has received multiple awards for outstanding achievement, most recently the ASTech Outstanding Leadership in Alberta technology 2015, Innovation Patent Award 2017, Innovation Makes Sense Spin Off Award 2015 and the Innovation Makes Sense Patent Award 2016.