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Dr. Thomas Stammler is Chief Technology Officer and Head of Product Strategy at ZEISS Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology . Thomas joined ZEISS in 1998 and has since held various leadership positions. For more than 10 years, he was responsible for product design and technology of lithography optics at ZEISS SMT. After heading the product strategy from 2020 onwards, Thomas became Chief Technology Officer for SMT in 2021. Before joining ZEISS, Thomas worked as visiting scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA, USA, and as staff member at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. Thomas completed his diploma in physics and his doctorate as Dr. rer. nat. at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. He was awarded the Otto Hahn Medaille of the Max Planck Society in 1995.
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Dr Andrew Rickman OBE is an entrepreneur, engineer, and scientist in the field of silicon photonics. He is the founder, and was CEO and executive chairman, of Rockley Photonics, delivering silicon photonics-based breakthroughs in biosensing solutions for healthcare and defining the field of co-packaged optical communications for the AI era (2021 IEEE Charles Kao Award).
Andrew was the founder and CEO of the first company to commercialize silicon photonics, Bookham, now part of Lumentum.  More recently, he was chairman of Kotura, which is now part of Nvidia.  Andrew has a mechanical engineering degree from Imperial College, a PhD in silicon photonics from Surrey University, and an MBA from Cranfield University. 
He was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Millennium Honours list for services to the telecommunications industry and won a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for his contribution to British Engineering.

Christian Koos is professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) since 2010 and co-founder of several start-ups in the field of integrated photonics such as Vanguard Photonics GmbH, Vanguard Automation GmbH, SilOriX GmbH, Deeplight SA and Luxtelligence SA. His research interests comprise silicon photonics and hybrid integration concepts along with the associated applications in high-speed communications, optical metrology and sensing, photonic-electronic signal processing, as well as quantum technologies. Christian Koos received the PhD (Dr.-Ing.) degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe in 2007. From 2008 to 2010, he was affiliated with the Corporate Research and Technology department of Carl Zeiss AG. He has been recognized for his work with several honors and awards such as the Berthold-Leibinger Innovation Award in 2018, an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2017, the Research Award of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg in 2014, and the Alfried-Krupp Prize for Young University Teachers in 2012.

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Joyce Poon is currently Senior Director of Photonics Architecture at Lightmatter. She is on leave from the University of Toronto, where she is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and has been on faculty since 2007. She served as Director at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics from 2018 until July 2024. She is also an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin. Dr. Poon and her team specialize in integrated photonics on silicon. They work closely with foundries on a wide range of topics in silicon photonics, including multi-layer silicon nitride integration, hybrid lasers, and integrated optics for the visible spectrum. Their research aims to advance integrated photonics for communications, computing, and brain interfaces. Dr. Poon obtained the Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2007 and 2003 respectively, and the BASc in Engineering Science (physics option) from the University of Toronto in 2002. Recognitions she has received include a Canada Research Chair (2012-2019), ECE Department Teaching Award (2017), OFC Top-Scored Paper (2017), MIT TR35 (2012), and the IBM Faculty Award (2010, 2011). She served as a Director-at-Large for Optica (formerly OSA) from 2021 to 2023. She is an Optica Fellow and a Fellow of the IEEE.
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• Diploma Degree Electrical Engineering from TU Dresden
• 5 Years Product Development Engineer later Project Manager Bosch Telecom for Network Access Equipment
• Almost 10 Years Product Development, Program Management and later Product Management for AMD developing ADSL Circuits, WLAN Technology, x86 Chip Sets, Embedded Processors
• MBA from HHL in 2006
• 8 Years Consulting in Product and Technology Development throughout Europe for PRTM, PWC and McKinsey
• 6 Years CTO at TRUMPF Hüttinger developing Process Power Supplies for Semicon, Surface Sputtering, Induction, Photovoltaics
• 2 Years CTO at Q.ANT and now Head of Native Computing at Q.ANT

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Niels Verellen is scientific director and R&D team leader integrated biophotonics at imec’s Life Science Technologies department. He develops integrated photonics solutions for life science applications and is a research fellow at the KU Leuven Quantum solid-state physics group. He received his MSc (2007) and Ph.D. (2011) degrees in physics from KU Leuven. He was awarded the Umicore Scientific Award in 2012 and received an ERC Starting Grant in 2018 to develop a high-resolution on-chip and lens-free fluorescence microscopy platform.
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After a career as a researcher and founder and CEO of Technobis Group, Pim Kat started experimenting with integrated photonics for sensing applications in 2008. This resulted in founding Technobis Fibre Technologies and Technobis Integrated Photonics Packaging Solutions. The Technobis Group was acquired by ACC in 2019. In 2021 Pim Kat co-founded Amazec Photonics and became CEO. Amazec Photonics focusses on the development and commercial launch of a high resolution temperature ( 0,0001 degree resolution) monitoring system for medical use to detect heart failure in an early stage. Amazec Photonics leads the technical development of the photonic chip, packaging, TEC control and low noise electronics of the system.
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Andy co-founded Scantinel Photonics in 2019, as a spin-out of Carl Zeiss. Before starting Scantinel he worked several years for the Zeiss Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology business unit and before that more than 10 years for Nokia Mobile Phones, always focused on bringing technical innovations to market. His background is in physics.

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Martin Hermatschweiler is co-founder and CEO of Nanoscribe since its foundation in 2007. He studied physics in Ulm and Karlsruhe, Germany. Among others he was chosen by the business magazine “Capital” among Germany’s 40 most-talented entrepreneurs younger than 40 years old. Under his guidance, business has been built up from scratch starting up with originally three employees. Today, Nanoscribe is a multinational medium-scaled enterprise with 100+ employees located in Karlsruhe, Shanghai and Boston. In June 2021, Nanoscribe has been acquired by the BICO group.

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Peter Hommelhoff earned his PhD at LMU Munich in 2002. In 2012, he was appointed full professor of physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has been recognized for his work with numerous honors and awards, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Association (DFG) in 2022, and the Berthold Leibinger Innovation Award in 2020. He received an ERC Advanced Grant for a project on chip-based particle accelerators and was principal investigator for several research projects such as the Quantum Electron Microscope Grant funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Before joining PhotonVentures as a General Partner, Ewit Roos co-founded PhotonDelta eight years ago and, as CEO, helped the organization develop into a globally recognized and well-funded integrated photonics industry accelerator focused on scaling the supply of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and their applications. As CEO, he led the development of an extensive ecosystem of Netherlands-based universities, research labs, 60+ company partnerships, and investors. This work culminated in PhotonDelta receiving commitments for €1.1 Billion of investment from the Dutch government and corporate partners to deploy in the coming five years.
Throughout the years, PhotonDelta helped found and fund over ten deep-tech photonics start-ups out of the ecosystem.In 2023, PhotonVentures, founded as an private investment fund within PhotonDelta, became independent, taking over the Ventures Capital activities incubated within PhotonDelta. Ewit's career is marked by strategic and impactful contributions in the field of venture capital and corporate partnership development, particularly in the semiconductor industry. His tenure as CEO of PhotonDelta is especially notable for his leadership in advancing the Dutch integrated photonics industry, underpinned by the establishment as co-founder of the dedicated PhotonVentures VC fund.
His entrepreneurial spirit is further reflected in his time as Director at Brightmove BV, where he successfully navigated early-stage equity funding for high-tech startups, culminating in the funding of 45 companies, mainly towards Series-A. Ewit’s academic credentials are as impressive as his professional achievements. He holds a management degree from Nyenrode Business University and an MPA degree from Erasmus University Rotterdam, adding a solid academic foundation to his extensive field experience.

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