Management Team
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Howard Earhart, Chairman and CEOHoward Earhart was formerly the Chairman and CEO of Power Integrations (POWI), an analog semiconductor company which now has $300 million in revenue and a $1.0 billion market cap. Power Integrations currently sells over one billion components per year to the consumer electronics industry. Howard was previously the CEO of Lin Data (a thin film disk manufacturer), and Amcodyne (a hybrid disk storage manufacturer). Earlier, he served as president of Information Magnetics and as president of the Consumer Products group at Memorex. Howard began his career as a development engineer at Eastman Kodak. He graduated with a B.S. in Engineering from Clarkson University. In addition to his responsibilities at LensVector, Howard is also a board member at Sandel Avionics, a supplier of advanced avionics display systems. |
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Dr. Tigran Galstian, CTODr. Tigran Galstian and his research team developed the LensVector tunable liquid crystal lens technology at Laval University in the Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers in Quebec, where he is a professor. Galstian brings more than 25 years of experience of R&D work in academic and industrial fields in Europe and North America. He has co-authored more than 450 technical articles, communications and patents, including all the LensVector-related patents. Galstian earned his doctorate and master's from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. |
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Bahram Afshari, VP EngineeringDr. Bahram Afshari has been managing the design and development of camera modules, imaging and electronics packaging components for more than 20 years. Prior to LensVector, Afshari was responsible for camera module product development at Flextronics, shipping more than 80 million camera module units in 2006. At Flextronics, he was also responsible for sourcing and shipping auto-focus cameras for major handset vendors. Afshari has held senior engineering management positions at Agilent and Hewlett-Packard. He earned his master's and doctorate in engineering at Stanford University and holds seven U.S. patents in electronics packaging. |
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Suresh Venkatraman, VP MarketingSuresh Venkatraman has more than 15 years of marketing, product management and engineering experience in imaging. Venkatraman was part of the team that brought the CMOS image sensor business into Micron Technology through the acquisition of Photobit in 2001. He served as the first product manager for Micron's CMOS image sensor products for cell-phone cameras. From 2001 until he joined LensVector in 2008, Venkatraman held senior marketing and product management roles within the Imaging Group at Micron, helping build this division from its inception into a global market leader shipping over a billion image sensors. He has a master's in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, where he worked with Professor K. R. Rao, a pioneer in imaging science. |
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Henning Stauss, VP OperationsHenning Stauss brings to LensVector more than 25 years of LCD manufacturing experience. Most recently, he was VP of global manufacturing for Syntax-Brillian, where he was responsible for worldwide manufacturing of Olevia LCoS televisions and Vivitar digital cameras. Previously, at Three-Five Systems, Stauss headed the largest LCD manufacturing line in the U.S. and ran all worldwide LCD operations, producing more than 2 million LCDs per month. Stauss has held senior manufacturing positions at Optrex, Thomson-CSF and General Electric. He holds a master's in physics from Technische Universitat Darmstadt, Germany. |
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Peter Clark, VP OpticsPeter Clark is a widely respected industry expert in small camera optics and lens design. Before joining LensVector, he was the director of optical engineering at Flextronics, where he was responsible for the development of optical systems for major camera phone customers. Clark spent more than 20 years as the director of optical engineering at Polaroid prior to the acquisition of his division by Flextronics in 2004. Clark holds 13 U.S. patents. A fellow of the Optical Society of America, he has a master's in electro-optics from Northeastern University and a bachelor's in optics from the University of Rochester. |
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Thomas Killick, VP Business DevelopmentThomas Killick was the director of business development at Precision Optical Systems, a pioneer in the camera phone market. In 2002, Precision Optical acquired Polaroid's commercial optics division, repurposed it for the camera phone market, and sold it to Flextronics in 2004. Killick has built strong relationships with many of the key players in the camera phone industry. He has served as the director of business development at several venture-capital-backed startups. He holds a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London. |
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Paul Miller, VP Corporate DevelopmentPaul Miller brings a broad range of corporate development experiences to LensVector. Most recently at Applied Materials, he led strategic plans to expand Applied’s scope of business in both global services and equipment products and brought them to market with a number of projects involving partnerships, investments and new product development. Previously, he managed corporate development at a venture backed startup in the mobile phone industry. Earlier, as the VP/GM for a Global Fortune 500 company, he established a corporate venture investment fund and then initiated and managed a new semiconductor materials business from concept to market leadership. Miller earned an MBA at Harvard as well as MS/BS engineering degrees from Stanford and a BA from Claremont McKenna College. |