Meet the expert presenters who are bringing innovative and industry-leading content to the Phosphors & Quantum Dots Industry Forum Online program.
This year's online program will feature programming focused around the latest research and commercial developments within each material sector, as well as more collaborative, material inclusive content - designed to identify and address the shared industry challenges, complementary solutions, and emerging lighting and display applications that are relevant to the entire value chain.
New speakers will be added as they are confirmed!
Juanita Kurtin is Director of Materials Research for OSRAM Opto Semiconductors. Prior to 2018, Dr. Kurtin was the CTO and co-founder of Pacific Light Technologies (PLT), an Oregon start-up company delivering high quality nanomaterials to the solid-state lighting and display markets in order to increase LED efficiency and brightness. She has a background in the research of nanomaterials for various device applications, including transistors, solar cells, and light emitting diodes.
Prior to founding PLT, Dr. Kurtin was the VP of R&D at SpectraWatt, a solar cell manufacturing company, and also spent six years developing new device architectures at Intel.
Dr. Kurtin obtained her BS degree in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, studying with quantum dot pioneer Dr. Paul Alivisatos.
Jason Hartlove joined Nanosys in 2008 with a proven track record of turning emerging technologies into successful commercial products. He previously developed the Optical Mouse which has sold more than one billion units worldwide and is a standard feature in all PCs. Hartlove also pioneered and developed key technologies used in CMOS image sensors in smartphone cameras, high capacity lithium-ion battery technologies and solid-state inverter technology used in solar and electric car charging systems.
His vision for Nanosys has led the company to successfully pioneer and develop Quantum Dot based display technologies. Today, Nanosys maintains a nearly 100% market share for materials used in these ultra-bright displays with lifelike colors sold by companies including Samsung, Vizio, Hisense, TCL, Acer, Asus and Sharp.
Prior to joining Nanosys, he was president of the Imaging Solutions Division of MagnaChip Semiconductor in Seoul, South Korea, where he turned an internally focused semiconductor group into a multinational company on track for an IPO. Before MagnaChip, Hartlove was vice president and general manager of the Sensor Solutions Division of Agilent Technologies, and previously held management and development positions at Hewlett-Packard.
Sjoerd has fifteen years of experience in business development, R&D, and management of scientific research projects in the fields of nanotechnology, photovoltaics, photonics, and photodetectors leveraging extensive laboratory experience in industry and research institutes. He was the Principal Scientist and Manager of R&D at InVisage Technologies Inc., a quantum dot-based imaging product company sold to Apple Inc. in 2017. He was the Director of Research, Technology and Innovation at the University of Toronto. He was awarded a Top 50 Scientific Discoveries by NSERC for the development of a solution-processed infrared laser. Sjoerd has an MSC in physics from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a PhD in laser physics from the University of Southampton. He has authored over 160 scientific publications and 10 patents.
Khaled Ahmed is a Senior Principal Engineer at Intel. Dr. Ahmed joined Intel in 2015 and previously worked at Intermolecular, Applied Materials, Conexant Systems, and Advanced Micro Devices. He has 125+ patents (pending and granted) in areas such as semiconductor equipment, thin films, device metrology, light emitting diodes, thin film transistors, microdevice transfer technology, laser speckle reduction, and metasurface optical elements. Dr. Ahmed earned BSc and MSc degrees Ain Shams University, and Doctor of Philosophy degree from North Carolina State University, all in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Ahmed currently leads the definition of industry leading disruptive display technologies including micro LED displays. Dr. Ahmed is a recipient of the Semiconductor Research Corporation's Mahboob Khan Best Industry Liaison Award in 2012. Khaled serves on the technical program committee of Display Week, the premier display technology conference. He is a senior member of the IEEE. Khaled was a visiting scholar at the Penn State University, University of California San Diego, Georgia Institute of Technology, and University of Southern California. He collaborated with several university research groups at Purdue University, IIT Bombay, Technion, University of California San Diego, US Santa Barbara, and the Penn State University.
Willem Walravens is CTO and Founder of QustomDot, an advanced materials start-up that produces on-chip grade and cadmium-free quantum dots. In addition, QustomDot assists customers to successfully integrate quantum dots in devices.
Dr. Cohen joined the lighting division of General Electric after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2000. He has developed a variety of experiences through roles of increasing responsibility in Technology, Manufacturing, and Business Operations that include phosphors and specialty materials development, lighting product design and manufacturing, tungsten wire processing, and commercial sales of phosphors and specialty materials. Dr. Cohen has significant operational experience built on various key roles over nine years in manufacturing including Plant Manager of GE Lighting’s Phosphor and Specialty Chemical Facility. He led GE Lighting’s technical efforts to mitigate rare earth supply and inflation pressures through phosphor innovation, lighting product redesign, and production process optimization for fluorescent lighting products.
Transitioning from traditional lighting materials to LED materials, Dr. Cohen led GE Lighting’s PFS/KSF Red Phosphor innovation, process/manufacturing development, and sales/commercialization activities. After GE’s sale of its commercial lighting business to American Industrial Partners in 2019, he continues as the business leader of the specialty Chemicals and Materials group of Current Lighting Solutions, LLC focused on technical innovation and profitable commercial growth of phosphors and other specialty materials.
Hunter McDaniel, PhD is UbiQD’s Founder and CEO. He transitioned from a postdoc position at Los Alamos National Laboratory to the company’s first full-time employee in 2014. His vision for the company is to become the worldwide leader in quantum dot manufacturing by enabling new products that aren’t possible with toxic CdSe or InP QDs. He has extensive relevant technical experience as he has worked on both traditional II-VI QDs (including those that contain cadmium) and I-III-VI QDs. During his career, Dr. McDaniel conducted research at top-tier research institutions; Los Alamos National Laboratory (postdoc 2011-2014), Argonne National Laboratory (2011), University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (PhD 2006-2011), and University of California at Santa Barbara (BS 2001-2006)). He is highly experienced in the materials science of semiconductor nanocrystals and their optoelectronic device applications (e.g., solar cells, LEDs) with over twenty research publications and more than 700 citations.
Robert J (Bob) O’Brien is Co-Founder and President of DSCC. Bob has decades of experience turning market and business analysis into strategic insights in the display and electronics industries. As Director of Market Intelligence and Strategy for Corning Glass Technologies, Bob developed an intelligence infrastructure to inform pricing strategy, product development, marketing communications and customer service strategy. He also developed external communications for investors and customers to realize Corning’s industry leading position.
Bob led the CGT intelligence team in building critical tools for analysis of both short- and long-term dynamics in the LCD industry. In response to Corning’s vulnerability to supply/demand swings, Bob developed an analytical model for predicting glass demand based on the supply/demand dynamics of the LCD value chain. The output of this model is frequently quoted in Corning’s earnings release and other communications. To increase understanding of the long-term dynamics of TV replacement, Bob led the efforts on consumer survey work to understand the replacement cycle of TV. As the cover glass market matured, Bob led the effort to explore and develop the Gorilla glass business in emerging markets.
Bob holds a BS in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University & an MBA from the University of Michigan Business School. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI with his wife Mattie & 3 sons. He can be reached at bob.obrien@displaysupplychain.com.
Dr. Klem received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto where his work with colloidal quantum dots contributed to the world's first demonstration of an infrared photovoltaic effect from PbS colloidal quantum dots. He has over 17 years of experience developing quantum dot-based optoelectronic devices. In 2018 he co-founded SWIR Vision Systems where he serves as Chief Technology Officer. At SWIR Vision Systems his focus is on commercializing the CQD photodiode technology he co-invented and accelerating the development of the technology for high volume markets. He has authored or co-authored 24 peer-reviewed journal publications, 25 issued patents, 4 pending patent applications, and 18 conference presentations and proceedings.
Kelley Rountree joined RTI International as a reliability and exposure engineer in 2017. At RTI, she serves as the team leader for the modification and environmental stress testing of SSL products on the SSL team. As part of the SSL team, she has been issued one U.S. patent as lead inventor, co-authored over a dozen project reports, and presented five conference posters or presentations. Kelley received a B.S. in chemistry and B.S. in mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013, and a M.S. in 2016 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she developed a prototype to study energy levels in quantum dots.
As a senior market and technology analyst at Yole Développement, Eric contributes to the development of LED, OLED, and display activities at Yole. He has authored a large collection of market and technology reports as well as multiple custom consulting projects on subjects including business strategy, identification of investments or acquisition targets, due diligence, market and technology analysis, cost modelling and technology scouting. Thanks to his deep knowledge of the LED/OLED and display industries, Eric has spoken at more than 30 industry conferences worldwide over the last five years. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading media all over the world.
Previously Eric has held various R&D, engineering, manufacturing and business development positions with the Fortune 500 Company Saint-Gobain, based in France and the United States.
Dr Eric Virey holds a PhD in Optoelectronics from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble.
With over 10 years of international experience, Itai has gained a broad technical knowledge and leadership skills in chemistry R&D. Itai has led developments of new methods in surface chemistry of nanoparticles, and in novel technologies in the field of semiconductors, focusing on surface chemistry of flat surfaces and self-assembled monolayers. In recent years, Itai has been focusing on R&D of thin film photodetectors.
Itai has gained his Ph.D. from Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Oldenburg, Germany, under the supervision of prof. Jürgen Parisi. His thesis is titled ”Properties tuning of semiconductor nanoparticles through organic and inorganic surface chemistry”.
Yang Qu was born in Hangzhou, China in 1989.
He received B.S.E. degree in Light-industry Chemistry from Zhejiang Sci-tech University, China, in 2011. He then moved to Yokohama, Japan, completed his M.S.E and Ph. D in Organic Electro-chemistry from Yokohama National University, in 2015 and 2018, respectively.
He joined Sharp Corporation Japan, Tenri, Japan where he worked on developing device fabrication process of QD-LEDs since 2018.
