Nicholas J. Wood
CEO, Acting

Nicholas is currently Senior Managing Director at Kidron Corporate Advisors LLC, an investment banking boutique specializing in Corporate M&A and advisory work. He is one of four General Partners of The Kidron Opportunity Fund, a Private Equity fund targeting emerging growth companies. He sits on three Boards of privately held technology companies helping develop and direct strategy and, as, Executive Chairman at Aveso, he has secured strategic funding for the Company. He was the CEO and founder of Emosyn LLC, a fabless semiconductor company in the smart card and security markets. In April 2005 he sold the company at Silicon Storage Technolgy after growing the business to a $100m run rate with 16 patents issued. Prior to founding Emosyn, he was V.P. Marketing for ATMI Inc., a semiconductor materials company where under his tenure the Company grew 10 fold to over a $1 billion market cap. Nicholas also spent ten years with Intel Corporation in Europe. He is a BSc (Honours) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering From University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

Dr. Leo J. Schowalter
Chief Technology Officer

After receiving his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Dr. Schowalter was employed by the GE Research and Development Center in Schenectady, NY. He joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1987 and was chair of the Physics Department from 1997 to 2000 at which time he resigned to work with Crystal IS and is currently on a leave of absence from RPI. He has over 25 years experience in crystal growth and nano-probe technologies for which he has received international recognition and has focused his efforts on AlN crystal growth for the last eight years. He has published over 140 articles, co-edited four proceedings volumes, given over 50 invited talks, and holds three US patents (with 5 pending). He has co-chaired several international symposia in the areas of thin film crystal growth and nano-probe technologies. He was a co-instructor for the 1999 and 2000 Fall MRS Tutorials on nitride semiconductors and a tutorial instructor on nitride semiconductor substrates at the Gorham Compound Semiconductor Outlook Meetings of 2000 (San Diego) and 2002 (Taiwan). Dr. Schowalter also won the Tech Valley Business Plan competition for Crystal IS in 2003.

Dr. Glen Slack
Chief Scientist

Dr. Slack spent much of his career as a scientist at the GE Research and Development Center and is a former Research Professor in Physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He has over 40 years of experience in wide-bandgap semiconductor crystal growth and characterization and is one of the pioneers who first demonstrated the possibility of bulk AlN crystal growth by the sublimation-recondensation method in the 1970s.

Dr. Slack has published over 110 papers and several review articles in these various fields of interest and has received both the Guggenheim and the Coolidge Fellowships for his work in solid-state physics. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 1956.

Dr. Joseph Smart
Vice President Device Development

Shortly before joining Crystal IS, Inc. in 2005, Dr. Smart earned his Ph.D. in Electro-Physics from Cornell University. His qualifications are extensive, including hands-on working experience in the industry on design, epi-growth and characterization of GaN. Dr. Smart has 4 pending patents for various GaN techniques and 1 patent on Epitaxial Overgrowth of GaN.

He began his career in 1988 at Micron Technology as a Product Engineer Silicon Research and Development. His subsequent engineering and management experience prepared him to become Director of GaN Materials/Technology, Infrastructure Product Line at RF Micro Devices in North Carolina.

Timothy J. Bettles
Vice President Business Development, Sales and Marketing

Timothy J. Bettles received his B.S. in Engineering, with honors, in 1992 from the University of Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom.

He began his engineering career as a Materials Research Technologist at Plessey Research and Technology (Caswell) Ltd., England and moved on to Senior Research Scientist at GEC Marconi Materials Technology Ltd., where he developed and built a tool to grow large area thin film diamond by the Hirose method. His technical and leadership experience brought him to the United States in 2001 as Sales Manager for Opto-Electronic Products for IQE Inc, Bethlehem Pennsylvania.

Prof. Dr. Stephan Mueller
Vice President Engineering

Dr. Stephan Mueller has 14 years of experience in the growth of wide bandgap semiconductors and co-authored more than 50 publications in refereed journals. In his most recent position as Principal Scientist with Cree Inc (Durham, NC) he was responsible for the management and coordination of many R&D and production projects in the field of wide bandgap semiconductors. He currently also holds a position as adjunct professor in the materials science department of North-Carolina State University. He received his Masters Degree in Physics and PhD in Materials Science at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany through research in the growth of bulk wide bandgap semiconductor crystals and has also published a book on this topic.

Kathryn Good
Controller

Kathryn Good's experience spans 25 years, much of which she spent in a local, Albany, NY public accounting practice, where she was a partner for several years. There she was manager in charge of the firm's quality control system, as well as being responsible for the planning and supervision of accounting and auditing engagements and tax planning and tax return preparation for business and not-for-profit clients in many industries. After having been responsible for the independent audit of Molecular OptoElectronics Corporation (MOEC) from its inception, she was employed by MOEC for over five years as its controller. She has over 10 years of experience working with high tech, start up companies.

Kathryn holds a BS in accounting from SUNY Buffalo. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the AICPA and NYSSCPAs.