About – Bolb Inc.

Who We Are.

Bolb, Inc. has developed and patented breakthrough technologies to enable ‘never before possible’ disinfection systems for air, water, surfaces, and food to scale on a global basis to benefit human health and increase productivity in key verticals with the objective to preserve valuable resources.

Dr. Jerry JP Zhang

Co-Founder and CTO

Dr. Jianping Zhang cofounded Bolb Inc. in 2014 with Drs. Ling Zhou, Ying Gao and Eun-hyun Park, and has since served as Chairman and Chief Technology officer of Bolb Inc. Dr. Zhang has accumulated over 20 years of experience in group III-nitride semiconductor industry and academia, and had done groundbreaking work in the field of deep ultraviolet light-emitting diode. He was a recipient of Year 2003 DARPA SUVOS outstanding performer award, and contributed to over 100 peer-reviewed publications and over 100 US and international patents and applications.

Dr. Ling Zhou

Co-Founder and CEO

Dr. Zhou co-founded Bolb Inc, and successfully raised $30MM in venture funding for the company from 2014-2021, serving as CEO of the company. He received training on semiconductor materials growth and processing technology and subsequently worked at Philips Lumileds as Lead Engineer on ultraviolet light-emitting diodes for the DoD-funded Solid-state Ultraviolet Optical Sources (SUVOS) project. He was awarded an Outstanding Performance Award from DARPA for his pioneering work on world’s first thin-film UVC LEDs in 2004.

Frank Harder

CRO

Frank Harder accumulated broad experience in global Sales, Marketing, and P/L functions. As founding member of IoT End to End Platform ARTIK with Samsung, and Marketing and Sales leaderships functions at LED pioneer Philips Lumileds, he demonstrated track record in building and sustaining several $100M businesses in LED, IoT, Cloud and Systems. He has provided leadership to disruptive start-up technology and business companies, raised successfully seed and A-rounds for start-ups. He received his Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Duesseldorf and his Business Degree from Wharton University of Pennsylvania.

Tim Lester

Fractional CFO

Tim Lester, Principal Consultant at Lester Consulting LLC, is a veteran executive of venture backed technology companies. He has raised more than $105 million in venture backed equity and $56 million in debt from multiple bank and venture debt financings. Mr. Lester brings more than 30 years of executive, financial and operational experience to Bolb, including leadership positions with several semiconductor and LED industry players such as LED lighting pioneer Bridgelux, ASIC design house eSilicon, LED manufacturer Lumileds Lighting and Philips Electronics. His skill at building effective financial and operational systems and processes for high growth technology companies has been repeatedly demonstrated. Mr. Lester received his Master of Management degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and his undergraduate in accounting from Marquette University. He is a CPA.

Maria Topete

Director of Applications

Maria Topete is the Director of Applications Engineering at Bolb, where she leads a team of engineers to design disinfectant system architectures that are optimized for performance and reliability. Maria has extensive experience developing robust thermal, optical, and driver ecosystems that support technology adoption. With over 25 years of engineering experience specializing in applications, technical marketing, product development, and manufacturing of solid-state lighting devices, Maria has helped numerous clients successfully pivot from traditional light sources to solid-state and also design solid-state lighting solutions from scratch. She thoroughly enjoys working with customers on their quest to develop new products that solve problems that benefit society and that win in the marketplace. Maria enjoys thinking, doing, building, testing, and analyzing data to essentially “make sense of the nonsense”. When she is not busy in the office or the lab, she can be found hiking or camping on the California coast or mountain ranges with her children and their Scout troop. Maria studied mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley and Stanford.

Ada Wang

Sr. Accountant and Customer Service

Is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in California with 5 years of combined experience in Accounting and Tax in both China and U.S.. She started her career at Deloitte China and received her Master Degree in Accounting from Fordham University in 2019.

Paul Blanc

Director Sales Europe

LED Lighting and customer success passionate, Paul has built his experience occupying various roles at major Lighting companies: Philips Ligthing 2007-2010, Osram 2010-2016 and Samsung 2017. He forged his solution and service oriented mindset through different positions in the Industry: Application Engineering, Business Development and Product Management. He further developed skills in Distribution and Management at Arrow Electronics where he set-up the Lighting solution business and led the Lighting Team (9 people - >100M€ revenue per year) from 2018 to 2021. Paul received his Master of Science from the ESIEA in Paris an Engineering school specialized in Information, Technology and Electronics in 2007. He is 37 years old and living near Munich in Germany.

Justin Nealis

Regional Sales Director, USA

Justin comes with a wealth of experience as a Sales Manager in the area of UVC Disinfection in air, water and surface both in commercial and residential acquired during his tenure at Fresh Aire UV in Florida (part of the DiversiTech Corporation). He has demonstrated a history in winning customers and channel partners through training, building strong value propositions, skilled negotiation, business planning, and strategic business development. Justin puts the customer and their success first. He received his business degree BS in Business Administration, Small Business, & Entrepreneurship from University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Dr. Mike Krames

Technical Board Advisor

Dr. Mike Krames is president of Arkesso, LLC, a consulting firm in Silicon Valley focusing on wide bandgap semiconductor materials, devices and applications. Dr. Krames’ has more than 25 years of compound semiconductor materials, device, and applications experience, with emphasis on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes. He has published over 90 papers and has been granted over 150 U.S. patents, and is a Fellow Member of both IEEE and IES.

Dr. Werner Goetz

Technical Consultant

Dr. Werner Goetz, Principal Consultant at Goetz Technology Consulting, is an expert on Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology and products. In his 25+ year career at Hewlett Packard, Philips Lighting, and Lumileds, Dr. Goetz made major contributions to the development of III-Nitride crystal growth, LED wafer fabrication techniques, testing and characterization methods, and packaging of high-power LEDs as the technology evolved from its infancy to dominance across virtually all visible lighting segments. Werner has significant experience in the applications of LEDs, use of drivers and controls, and the development of lamps and luminaires. In the early 2000s, Dr. Goetz was the principal investigator for the DARPA-funded SUVOS program at Lumileds developing UV-C LEDs. Dr. Goetz published extensively in the scientific literature on compound semiconductor technology and devices and presented keynote and invited talks at international conferences. He holds more than 30 patents.

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