Malcolm Thompson, Chief Executive Officer of RPO. Also Chairman and a director of Photon Dynamics, Inc. Previously Dr Thompson was the CEO and President of Vitex, Novalux, Inc. and also of dpiX, and Chief Technologist at Xerox PARC.

Stephen Ezekiel, GE Corporate Financial Services, Senior Managing Director, Head of Structured Finance. Previously managed GE Equity’s US$300m Asia-Pacific portfolio of investments. Over fifteen years experience in business development, M&A and structured finance at blue chip companies including GE and British Telecom.

Teresa Engelhard, Jolimont Ventures, Venture Partner. Previously VP Marketing and Business Development for Xponent Photonics, Vice President Software Solutions at ONI Systems and CEO of Timeshift. Teresa was also a Principal with Mohr, Davidow Ventures and a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. Teresa has a B.S. with Honors from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Stanford University.

Ian Maxwell, RPO, Executive Director & Founder. Ian has founded 7 start-ups and is a Venture Partner with Allen & Buckeridge Venture Capital. He was formerly, Corporate Technology Director for both the James Hardie and Memtec Corporations. He has a PhD in Physical Polymer Chemistry from the University of Sydney

John Midgley, CEO of Ultradots Inc. Previously CEO of Lightwave Microsystems, a startup and technical leader in optical waveguide technology, where he raised $150mm and merged the company with NeoPhotonics. Prior to Lightwave, John was VP and Director of Corporate Technology at Raychem, a $1.8bn advanced materials company, where he initiated and led the incubation of ventures based on proprietary internal and acquired technology. He holds 11 patents and has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals. John has a BA from Oxford University, a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Cambridge University, and an MBA from Stanford.

Knut Eichler, BASF Venture Capital, Director, Asia Pacific. Previously worked at Erber AG in Singapore as Director Strategic R&D. From 1997-2000 he was an R&D manager for BASF Aktiengesellschaft in Germany. He has a Ph.D. from the Institute National des Sciences Appliqués in Lyon/France in the area of molecular microbiology and an MBA from INSEAD in 2001.