Dr. John P. Ferraris
Chief Executive Officer
Founder

Education
• NRC-NBS Postdoctoral Researcher, National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C., Dr. Martin G. Broadhurst (retired), Director  
• Ph.D., Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md, 1973
• M.A., Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md, 1971
• B.A., Chemistry, magna cum laude , St. Michael's College, Winooski, Vt, 1969

Professor Ferraris received his B.A. in Chemistry from St. Michael’s College, Winooski, VT in 1969 and his Ph. D. in Chemistry in 1973 from the Johns Hopkins University. He immediately thereafter conducted a National Research Council Postdoctoral at the National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D. C., joining the faculty of the University of Texas at Dallas in 1975. He is currently Professor of Chemistry and Physics, and Head of the Department of Chemistry. From 2003 - 2006, he assumed he duties of Interim Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Dr. Ferraris’ active research group has been funded by extramural contracts and grants from federal, state and private sources. The research in the Ferraris group focuses on the design, synthesis and characterization, and application of novel electroactive organic materials. Areas of research include: polymers and composites for organic solar cells, nanostructured hybrid membranes for high temperature fuel cells, electrochemical capacitors, light-emitting polymers and organics, electrochromic polymers, and membrane-based gas separations. 

Dr. Anvar A. Zakhidov
President
Chief Technology Officer
Founder

Prof. Anvar A.ZAKHIDOV is a Deputy Director of UTD-NanoTech Institute, Full Professor of Physics and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), working in the area of nanotechnology, organic and hybrid photovoltaics, organic light emiting devices, carbon nanostructures, (carbon nanotubes and fullerenes) and photonic crystals. A. Zakhidov is a member of associations in the field of physics, chemistry and materials science, which requires an outstanding achievement, as judged by recognized international experts (APS, ACS, and MRS).

Earlier Zakhidov was working as Senior Research Scientist of Honeywell, (former Allied Signal Inc.) since March 1996. He got his Ph.D. degree in Optics in Moscow in 1981 and since that time was actively involved in scientific research in various places, including Nuclear Institute of Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, (1983-1988), 4 years spent in Japan (as Monbusho Visiting Professor in IMS, Okazaki and Kyoto and Osaka Universities), 1.5 year in Italy (Bologna, Institute Molecular Spectroscopy). A. Zakhidov has been awarded internationally recognized awards and fellowships for excellence in the field of Physics and Material Science (Monbusho and NEDO (Japan), and INTAS (Europe)). Recently he was recognized as “The Engineer of the Year Award” by CIE/USA in the year 2002 and got Nano 50 Award from Nanotech Briefs Magazine (2006), and the NanoVic Prize from Australia (2006). A. Zakhidov is a member of associations in the field of physics, chemistry and materials science, which requires an outstanding achievement, as judged by recognized international experts (APS, ACS, and MRS).

Zakhidov is also serving as a US Regional Managing Editor of International Journal of Nanoscience and in the Editorial Board of ‘Molecular Materials”, an International journal and edited a guest volume of Synthetic Metals. Zakhidov was and presently is a Principal Investigator in several grants on advanced materials awarded by such USA Government agencies as DARPA, NASA, DOD, AFOSR, NSF and other for total funding of over $ 8 M. He has more than 200 published papers and 6 USA patents in the field of advanced materials, including conducting polymers, carbon nanotubes, and various other frontier materials and devices. Zakhidov has theoretically predicted and co-pioneered the experimental discovery (with K.Yoshino and S. Morita) of fast photoinduced charge transfer from conjugated polymers to fullerene molecule C60 in 1991. This phenomena is now widely used in plastic solar cells, photo-detectors and biochips. The system of poly-hexylthiophene-fullerene: PHT/C60, first described in Zakhidov’s paper (Solid State Communications, 1992) is now used as a basic materials combination in all practical and commercial polymeric solar cells. For this discovery Zakhidov was awarded in 2007 the “Kapitza medal for Scientific Discovery” by Russian Academy of Natural Science, and is elected as a Foreign Member of this Russian Academy. Most recently the work of A. Zakhidov and his co-workers on three-dimensional charge collection in polymeric solar cells with transparent carbon nanotubes (Sol. Mat. Solar cells, 2007) has been recognized by MRS “Top5 Cool papers award” in 2007.

Alexios Papadimitratos
R&D Engineer

Alexios Papadimitratos is a Research Engineer/Scientist with Solarno, Inc. He received his Master of Science degree (M.S.) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University. During his studies at Cornell University he worked in several research projects at the Cornell Laboratory of Organics Electronics. Before and during his time at Cornell, he worked at GE Global Research and H.A.I as an intern. He has strong experience in nanofabrication, electrical characterization and testing of organic electronic devices. In Solarno Inc, he is responsible for the development novel architectures for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic solar cells (OPVs) with carbon nanotube sheet electrodes. The overall objective of his project is development of the innovative nanotechnology for fabrication of high-efficiency OLEDs and OPVs employing well-developed and low-cost technologies.

William Holmes III
Research Engineer

William Holmes has 12 years of experience at NASA/Johnson Space Center in fabrication and research of nanotube materials. During this time he setup the laser ablation nanotube fabrication process and made hundreds of research runs on the system. During nanotube production many in-situ characterization techniques were performed including Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF), transient temporal recordings, nanotube absorption, spatial elemental analysis, thermodynamic surface temperature study, ICCD spectral resolution, spatial nanotube growth rates, and system parametric studies. Beyond the production lab William has experience with multiple characterization techniques on nanotubes including SEM, UV-VIS, TGA, and Raman. In Solarno Inc, he is responsible for CVD synthesis of nanotube forests and drawing into sheets for Solarno applications.