Eichenholz Inducted to NAI; Q-CTRL Adds Engineering Head: People in the News: 12/20/23

Luminar Technologies cofounder and CTO Jason Eichenholz will be inducted into the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Eichenholz has 83 U.S. patents, pertaining to technologies including lidar, solid-state lasers, displays, and photonic devices. Eichenholz is also a courtesy faculty member at the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics (UCF CREOL).

Jason Eichenholz. Courtesy of the University of Central Florida.

SYDNEY — Quantum technology company Q-CTRL appointed Dimitri Koubaroulis head of engineering. Koubaroulis previously led SafetyCulture's flagship product engineering team.

CAMPBELL, Calif. — Metal additive manufacturing company Velo3D appointed Brad Kreger interim CEO. Kreger has been executive vice president of operations at the company since 2022, and has held executive positions at Affymetrix, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Fluidigm. He takes over from Benny Buller, who founded Velo3D and had been CEO for the past nine years. Buller will remain on the company’s board of directors.

Harry Buhrman. Courtesy of Quantinuum.

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. — Quantinuum, an integrated quantum computing company, named Harry Buhrman as its chief scientist of algorithms and innovation. Buhrman previously formed and headed the quantum computing group at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and founded the national research center for quantum software and technology, QuSoft, a collaboration between CWI and the University of Amsterdam, in 2015.

Isaac Nape. Courtesy of the University of Witwatersrand.

JOHANNESBURG — The University of Witwatersrand and Optica appointed Isaac Nape the inaugural Optica Emerging Leader in Optics Chair. Nape, in the position, will lead efforts in quantum information processing, focusing on communication and computation. Nape is a recipient of the South African Institute of Physics Silver medal and has 1150 citations through 25 published journal papers.

MUNICH — INOVA Semiconductors announced that Robert Isele will assume a co-leadership role alongside company cofounder and CTO Roland Neumann, following the death of company CEO Robert Krauss. Hans Weilnhammer, who was acting interim CEO, will return to his duties as CFO. Isele has worked for the BMW group for more than 20 years, contributing to and overseeing development and application of APIX and ISELED.

WIEDEN, Germany — Photoelectric sensors and image processing company SensoPart appointed Rodriga Silva managing director of newly-opened subsidiary SensoPart Portugal. Silva has more than 20 years of sales experience in the vision and automation industry.

Gary Krakos. Courtesy of Vision Engineering.

SURREY, U.K. — Optical and digital technologies company Vision Engineering named Gary Krakos distributor sales executive. Krakos previously served as senior sales associate at Owl Cyber Defense, as well as regional manager at Victorinox.

SEATTLE — Know Labs appointed Jeff Hitchcock, Karmeen Kulkarni, Meng Tan, and Satish Garg to its medical and scientific advisory board.