Key People

Jürgen Kurb, CEO

Juergen is an experienced and able CEO who has grown a number of technology companies to profitability. He has fostered strong technical and management teams and maximized volume and profit on his vision of continually increasing product functionality by getting closer to the end-user. For example, based on his 1997 idea of MP3 functionality in cell phones he managed the first design-in at Ericsson. In 2003 Juergen enabled Innolume’s start-up as an angel investor and board member. One year later he took over as CEO. Juergen is also a board member in other high tech companies and Chairman of the Board for a GaN company.

Before joining Innolume, Juergen founded his own company, Micronas, in Switzerland and managed its successful IPO on the Zürich Stock Exchange in 1996 with a market valuation of 260 million and multiples of 26 for investors after five years. He held positions as CEO and President. When he left, five years after the IPO, turnover was close to one billion and the company had its own semiconductor, saw filter, and sensor fabrication facilities in Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and Scotland. Micronas’ major customers included blue chip companies in the automotive and cell phone markets.

Prior to founding Micronas, Juergen was VP of Sales and Marketing for the semiconductor business of Swatch Group in Switzerland, where he diversified and successfully grew the company from a captive to an open market supplier. Earlier he held Marketing and Sales Management positions at Intel, focusing on OEM systems and high end CPU design-in activities. Previously, as sales manager at Honeywell in Europe he rapidly grew the systems business and generated Honeywell’s highest margins world-wide. Juergen started his professional career as an MSEE at ITT developing computer systems and peripherals, and took the lead as R&D manager after two years.

Dr. Greg Wojcik, VP of Engineering

In his 30 year engineering and mathematics career, Greg’s research has focused on wave propagation, ranging from very large scale systems to integrated devices. He began optical modeling in the late '80s, helping Tencor Instruments Inc. calibrate optical surface scattering behavior (Surfscan). A few years later, with his excellent team at Weidlinger Associates, he developed the first finite element/finite difference time-domain wave solver for optical phenomena in semiconductor processing. This code was applied extensively to phase-shift masks and lithography in the early '90s and used by SEMATECH, Intel, IBM. and Dupont, among others. In 2001 he joined a laser startup as Photonics Leader and subsequently worked for Applied Materials as Photonics Manager in its Silicon Photonics Group. He has Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from Caltech, and B.S. Degrees in Engineering and Mathematics from California Polytechnical Institute in San Luis Obispo.

Dr. Daniil Livshits, VP of Technology

With more than 15 years of experience in manufacturing process of laser diodes, Daniil manages Innolume’s fabrication facilities, being responsible for production of Innolume’s diode lasers. Before joining the company in 2004 he has been working in ITRI, Taiwan in the field of diode laser processing and packaging. Daniil graduated from the State Technical University in St.Petersburg, Russia in 1993, and received his PhD from Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St.Petersburg, Russia in 2000.

Guido Vogel, VP of Business Development

Guido joined Innolume in 2004, as Business Development Engineer of optoelectronic components. Prior to this, he was Sr. Product Marketing Engineer at Mitsubishi Electric in Düsseldorf, responsible for discrete laser diodes sales and marketing throughout Europe. He graduated from the University of Gelsenkirchen with a degree in Engineering Physics in 2000.

Dr. Feng Zhang, Director of Transceiver Development

Feng Zhang joined Innolume in 2009, bringing over 18 years of industrial experience designing and developing high-speed optoelectronic devices, optical transceivers, and WDM optical systems. Previously, Dr. Zhang was Sr. Principal Engineer and Sr. Design Engineer at Emcore and Oplink, respectively, where he designed and developed 10 Gb/s optical transceivers based on a multi-rate (multi-protocol) XFP form factor operating over the industrial temperature range, as well as SFP+ and X2 form factors. From 1998 to 2000 he was a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Labs and did extensive research in optical interconnections and optical backplanes. Prior to Bell Labs, he worked in the Advanced Technology Department of Nortel for three years as a Member of the Scientific Staff, where he developed 10 Gb/s III-V Mach-Zehnder modulators. Dr. Zhang holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Waterloo in Canada and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Xi’an Jiantong University in China.