About Us

Our Company

We innovate across photonics, electronics, packaging and manufacturing to create optics significantly more dense, scalable and lower power than existing solutions, breaking the I/O wall in data centers and enabling more advanced compute, AI and machine learning.

Leadership

Peter Winzer

Founder & CTO

Before founding Nubis, Peter led Bell Labs’ fiber-optic transmission research, setting multiple high-speed optical transmission records and contributing to optical communications product developments and live field trials. 

He has published over 500 scientific papers, holds over 100 granted patents and has been widely recognized with awards including Bell Labs Fellow, Fellow of the IEEE and Optica, Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the John Tyndall Award and an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Eindhoven. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lightwave Technology, Program Chair of ECOC and Program/General Chair of OFC. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria.

Dan Harding

CEO

Prior to joining Nubis, Dan was Vice President of Marketing at Broadcom, where he defined and brought to market multiple generations of Broadcom’s industry-leading Ethernet NICs, SmartNICs and offload compute engines for video and encryption.

He grew the business by over 10x by partnering closely with the leading hyperscale cloud operators and system OEMs across the world. During his career at Broadcom, he led numerous market leading products, and was responsible for nearly $1B in annual revenue. Before Broadcom, Dan was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Sandburst Corp., a pioneer in developing scalable switch fabrics and network processors as merchant silicon components for high-end Ethernet switches. Sandburst was acquired by Broadcom in 2006. Dan holds a BA from Duke University.

Guilhem de Valicourt

VP of Engineering

Before joining the founding team at Nubis, Guilhem was Principal Scientist at IPG Photonics launching their silicon photonics activities.

Prior to IPG, he was with Alcatel Lucent in France and at Bell Labs USA working on optical communication systems. He has authored over 120 scientific papers in journals and international conferences, 4 book chapters and holds more than 35 patents. He has received the Alcatel-Lucent Best Project Award, the Marconi Young Scholar award, the Harm Dorren Commemoration Award and the 2019 IEEE Outstanding Young Professional award. Guilhem received his BSc/MSc degree in applied physics from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA), Toulouse, France and MSc in Photonics Devices from Essex University.

Dawit Belete

VP of Operations

Prior to joining Nubis, Dawit was Vice President of Operations at NXP where he was responsible for the manufacturing operation of Networking, Wireless Access and RF businesses over the last 15 years.

In his most recent operation role, he successfully defined and ramped complete supply chain for 5G Infrastructure products that include Silicon Carbide/Epi, GaN Fabrication, Advanced wafer dicing, Assembly and Final Test across 3 Asia sites. Prior to leading operation, Dawit spent the half his career in various design management roles centered around designing PowerPC microprocessors and Networking products. Dawit holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Prairie View A&M University.

Marco Lamponi

Head of Silicon Photonics

Marco is a recognized expert in photonics integration. Prior to joining the founding team at Nubis, he led the silicon photonics design team at Huawei, launching the company’s first commercial silicon photonic-based coherent and datacom transceiver products.

Marco held previously held positions at Thales R&T and Bell Labs France where he pioneered the development of innovative photonic integrated circuits. Author of over 60 publications in international journals and conferences, he holds more than 15 patents. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Paris-Sud, France, and MSc degrees in Electronics Engineering from École Supérieure d’Électricité, France, and Physics Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

Pete Pupalaikis

Head of System Architecture

Pete is a pioneer in digital signal processing, signal and power integrity and RF/microwave systems. He became a founding member of Nubis after 25 years at LeCroy (now Teledyne LeCroy) where he developed the technology for the industry’s fastest oscilloscopes.

At LeCroy he managed integrated circuit and digital signal processing development, and intellectual property. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow for contributions to high¬-speed waveform digitizing instruments and was inducted into the U. S. National Academy of Engineering for digital signal processing for test and measurement instruments. Pete holds over 50 patents and is the author of the book S ¬parameters for Signal Integrity, a chapter in Modern RF/Microwave Measurement Techniques and over 40 papers. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Rutgers University.

Brett Sawyer

Advanced Packaging Architect

Brett pioneered high speed electrical design with advanced packaging (3¬D and 2.5¬D IC and Fan¬-Out Wafer-¬Level Packaging) for high-performance computing and next generation optical module applications. Before joining the founding team at Nubis, he designed co-packaged optical engines at Rockley Photonics.

His ground-breaking PhD research at Georgia Tech achieved the world’s first 2.5¬D glass interposer package with 1 TB/s die-¬to-¬die and 400 Gb/s off¬-interposer bandwidths. Brett earned his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Old Dominion University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Jon Proesel

Head of Electrical IC

Jon is an expert in analog and mixed-signal circuit design specializing in high-speed fiber optical and electrical communications. Prior to joining Nubis he was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center where he received multiple technical awards.

He is a senior member of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society and served on the Technical Program Committee for the Symposium on VLSI Circuits. Jon received the B.S. degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Son Thai Le

Head of System Test

Son is an optical transmission systems expert. Formerly at Nokia, he supported the development of Nokia 400G – 800G coherent DSP, designed the first Gbps-class optical supervisory channel with polarization tracking capability, and conducted leading research on data center links.

Son Thai Le is an Optica Fellow and Senior Member of IEEE. He received the “Innovator of the Year Germany” and “Innovator Under 35 Europe” awards. He has published more than 120 research papers and holds more than 10 patents in the field of fiber optical communications and 5G/6G mobile fronthaul. Son received his Ph.D. from Aston University in the UK with a thesis on DSP techniques enablingTbps optical links.

Randy Giles

Head of Micro-Optics

Randy is the inventor of several commercially foundational technologies including the erbium doped fiber amplifier and the first MEMS-based optical cross-connect. Prior to joining the Nubis founding team, Randy’s career milestones include Chief Scientist of the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory (ISSNL), founding President of Bell Labs Seoul.

Previously, he was Director of multiple research departments at Bell Labs (AT&T, Lucent, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia) and continues to serve as Senior Science Advisor to Optica. Randy is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a Millennium Technology Prize Laureate, recipient of the Tyndall Award and an Optica Fellow. He is an author on more than 100 publications and inventor on more than 50 patents. Randy received his PhD from the University of Alberta. 

Karen Liu

Senior Director of Product Management

Karen is a marketing expert specializing in fiber optic technology transitions. Before selling high-speed modulators and transceivers to hyperscalers as VP of Sales and Marketing at Lightwave Logic and Kaiam, she was a leading industry analyst at Ovum/RHK.

She had moved from technical R&D at IBM to Marketing at Tellabs in order to introduce customers to optical networking. She received a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University and a BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University.

Investors

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Join Our Team

Join an inclusive and passionate team working in a low overhead environment, who are creating the most advanced interconnect technologies in the world to support the next generation of AI and machine learning breakthroughs.