Speakers

Sven Achenbach
Professor, University of Saskatchewan;
SyLMAND, Canadian Light Sourc
.

Sven Achenbach (M’11) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. (1996) as well as the P.D. (2000) degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
Following several Research Assistant positions and a research stipend at the National Research Center CNRS-LURE, Paris, France, he was a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Research Center Karlsruhe, Germany (2000 to 2003), focusing on deep X-ray lithography process technology. In 2003, he was awarded a tenured Research Scientist position at the Institute of Microstructure Technology in Karlsruhe. In 2005, he assumed an Associate Professorship in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2009 and was appointed as a TR Labs Adjunct Scientist. His research interests include instrumentation and process development for polymer- and metal-based micro- and nano devices and applications such as RF-MEMS, optics, and micro/nano fluidics. In the past decade, he has conceptualized and developed the Synchrotron Laboratory for Micro and Nano Devices (SyLMAND), Canada’s deep X-ray lithography facility at the Canadian Light Source CLS, where he is a Beam Team Leader and Principal Investigator. He is the author of a book chapter, a patent, and more than 60 articles.
Dr. Achenbach was the recipient of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe “Excellent Young Scientists” award and tenured position (2003) and was appointed as the Canada Research Chair in Micro and Nano Device Fabrication (2005-2015).

Simon Doe
National Facility Manager
Australian National Fabrication Facility
(ANFF-SA)

Simon is currently both the National ANFF Manager and the Facility Manager for the South Australian node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility.

Established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) is a world-class micro and nanofabrication facility and provides academia and industry with access to more than 500 state-of-the-art micro/nanofabrication facilities spread across 21 Australian locations.

For more than a decade, ANFF has been enabling research through a mixture of training, expert support and direct access. From proving principles to producing prototypes, the network is helping to bring about new generations of:
• medical devices,
• materials,
• electronics,
• photonics,
• and more.

Prior to joining ANFF, Simon has worked in several industries across materials and welding engineering

Jane Fitzpatrick
Chief Operating Officer
Australian National Fabrication Facility
(ANFF-SA)

Dirk Ortloff
Department Manager
camLine

Dr. Dirk Ortloff works as a Product Manager XperiDesk for the camLine GmbH in Petershausen, Germany. The independent software vendor provides solutions in the area of production and development automation, data management, integration and statistical assessment (MES, SPC, OEE, PDES) for electronics, semiconductor and photovoltaics industries. Previously he co-founded Process Relations GmbH in 2007 where the original XperiDesk product had been developed. Dirk Ortloff is a specialist in Innovation Management Methodologies and supporting software systems. In 1995 he received his diploma in computer science from the University of Dortmund and undertook, next to his managerial engagements, a doctorate in 2006. His current focus is on improving innovation management through methods, techniques, and tools in several high-tech industries.

Mohammadreza Rezaee
Co-founder & CTO
Aurora Quantum Technologies

Mohammadreza received his Ph.D. in 2015 from University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2015. He is postdoctoral fellow at Max Planck – uOttawa Centre for extreme Quantum Photonics. Priror to that he was at the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering and Physics Department at Texas A&M University, where he set up and operated a laboratory for quantum nanosensing. Prior to his doctorate work, he earned his BS in Atomic Physics from Shiraz University and his Master’s in Photonics from Shahid Beheshti University in Iran.

In 2017, he started a quantum technology company in Toronto, Canada in pursuit of his dream of turning pure physics into high-technology products. He joined the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) and its quantum machine learning program to learn the fundamentals of business development and improve his entrepreneurial skills. He completed CDL’s program in 2018. As CEO and co-founder, he led his venture to participate in the Y Combinator startup accelerator program in the winter of 2019. Upon the completion of the prestigious accelerator program in Silicon Valley, he returned to Canada in order to further develop the core technologies of the startup.

His mission is to accelerate the commercialization of quantum technologies. He is interested to find technological applications from his laboratory research. He is fascinated by the promises and power of quantum computation. He has established social groups and organized events raising awareness of quantum technologies while educating the public on their opportunities and threats.

He loves nature and everything it has to offer. He hiked the Appalachian trails and camped around the Smoky Mountains for years. He loves kayaking, canoeing, and watersports in general. He has enjoyed many kayaking experiences in Tennessee and Kentucky over the years.

Robert Wolkow,
Professor,
University of Alberta

Robert Wolkow is a Professor in the Department of Physics, iCORE Chair of Nanoscale Information and Communications Technology at the University of Alberta and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is also the Principal Research Officer and Nanoelectronics Program Coordinator at the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT), AITF Industrial Chair in Atom Scale Fabrication and CTO of Quantum Silicon Inc. He received his BSc from the University of Waterloo, his PhD from the University of Toronto and did postdoctoral work at the IBM TJ Watson Research Centre before becoming a staff scientist at Bell Laboratories. He has received multiple awards for outstanding achievement, most recently the ASTech Outstanding Leadership in Alberta technology 2015, Innovation Patent Award 2017, Innovation Makes Sense Spin Off Award 2015 and the Innovation Makes Sense Patent Award 2016.