CEO and President
Dr. Popescu serves as Chief Executive Officer and oversees the technology development and strategic direction of the company, while coordinating new technology transfer into Phi Optics IP portfolio.
Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Tangella is a board certified anatomic and clinical pathologist, and medical director of four College of American Pathology accredited laboratories. He is a member of Board of Directors at Christie Clinic, Champaign County Medical Society, and Presence Covenant Medical Center. Dr Tangella holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He participated in the launch of a Silicon Valley startup where he now sits on the board (TIVIX). He is also a Clinical Associate Professor in Departments of Pathology and Internal Medicine at University of Illinois College of Medicine.
COO & Principal Scientist
Dr. Chiritescu serves as Chief Operations Officer and also spearheads the development of QPI platform’s applications in the life sciences, nanotechnology and materials science field. He holds a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With over 20 years of experience in development of optical instrumentation, optical metrology and ultrafast spectroscopy, his work experience includes positions in national laboratories in Romania, France and USA.
Investor, Serra Ventures LLC
Mr. Hoerr is a seasoned business executive with over 25 years of experience spanning a variety of industries. For seven years, through July 2008, Mr. Hoerr served as Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of iCyt (acquired by Sony in 2010), an award-winning bioscience technology firm located at University of Illinois Research Park.
Professor
Dr. Popescu is William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received the B.S. and M.S. in Physics from University of Bucharest, M.S. in Optics and Ph.D. in Optics from the School of Optics/ CREOL (now the College of Optics and Photonics), University of Central Florida. After a postdoc in Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at M.I.T. he joined UIUC in August 2007 where he directs the Quantitative Light Imaging Laboratory (QLI Lab) at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Dr. Popescu is a forefront scientist in the field of Biophotonics and label-free quantitative imaging, and serves as an Associate Editor of Optics Express and Biomedical Optics Express, Editorial Board Member for Journal of Biomedical Optics, and Scientific Reports.
Independent Director
Mr. Taylor’s expertise is in working with faculty startups in customer development, acquiring first sales, and business development. He has successfully taken several software products to market. He helped start Pattern Insight, an NSF SBIR funded company licensing university technology that was acquired by VMWare in 2012.
Financial Counsel, Serra Ventures LLC
Dennis is an accomplished executive with over 25 years of experience providing strategic and financial direction to businesses in health care, communications, financial services and scientific instrument manufacturing with revenues ranging from start-up to $45M annually.
Legal Counsel, Meyer Capel
Tracy graduated from the University of Illinois in 1984 with the joint degrees of juris doctor and master of business administration in finance. He works with many high tech companies in central Illinois and has experience in handling corporate and general business matters, trademark and copyright matters, and securities laws.
