Gene Dolgoff is the founder, CEO, CTO, and Chairman of Holobeam Technologies, a Long Island biotech building holographic tools to detect and treat cancer. He has been making holograms since 1964, holds over 65 patents worldwide, built the world's first LCD projector, and consulted with Gene Roddenberry on the concept that became the Star Trek Holodeck. Today his company is developing Holographic Energy Teleportation (HET), advanced nanoparticles, and a new class of MRI imaging - aiming, in his words, to teleport energy through the body to kill cancer cells.
Michael LaFramboise is the CEO and co-founder of Aurelius Systems, a San Francisco defense startup building autonomous, AI-guided laser turrets that detect and destroy drones at the speed of light for roughly pennies per shot. A Case Western engineer, Navy veteran, and ex-Coherent and Amazon Devices operator, he dropped out of a Columbia PhD in nano optical systems to build Archimedes, a low-cost directed-energy weapon. Aurelius raised a $10 million seed co-led by General Catalyst and Draper Associates in September 2025 and opened a U.S. manufacturing line for high-power fiber lasers in 2026, aiming to become America's domestic one-stop laser shop.
Jennifer Aspell is the CEO of BrightView Technologies, a Durham, North Carolina optics company that engineers micro lens array films to shape and manage light for displays, AR/VR, automotive, LiDAR, sensing and LED lighting. An electrical engineer trained at Rensselaer, UC Berkeley and Purdue, she started out at Bell Laboratories building technology for long-haul optical networks before moving through Lucent, JDS Uniphase and Tyco Electronics. She took the helm of BrightView in 2010 after the recession gutted its original rear-projection-TV market, and rebuilt it into a global supplier serving more than 200 customers, capped by a $7M Series B in 2025 led by Forvia Hella and Technology Venture Partners.
Patrick Naulleau is the CEO of EUV Tech Inc., a Martinez, California-based company leading the development of at-wavelength extreme ultraviolet (EUV) metrology tools for semiconductor manufacturing. With over 25 years of pioneering work in EUV lithography — including helping build the world's first EUV scanner at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-developing the SHARP EUV mask microscope — Naulleau transitioned from world-class researcher to industry CEO in 2022. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, is a Fellow of both Optica and SPIE, and has authored over 400 publications. EUV Tech raised a $36M Series A led by Intel Capital in 2023.
Yongwei Zhang is the CEO of Complete Genomics and MGI Americas, leading one of the most ambitious efforts to make whole-genome sequencing fast, accurate, and affordable at scale. With a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins and dual bachelor's degrees from Tsinghua University, Zhang brings a rare blend of optics precision, software fluency, and entrepreneurial grit to the genomics frontier. He architected the DNBSEQ sequencing platform series now used by over 2,600 researchers in 100 countries, and has positioned Complete Genomics as a formidable challenger to Illumina's market dominance - at a fraction of the cost.
Barmak Heshmat is an optical physicist and entrepreneur who founded Brelyon, a San Mateo-based startup creating Ultra Reality displays that generate immersive panoramic virtual screens without any headset. A former MIT Media Lab research scientist and onetime head of optics at Meta's AR division, Heshmat ranked in the top 1% of Iran's national university entrance exam, earned a PhD in optoelectronics from the University of Victoria, filed 8 patents, published 20 journal papers, and now leads a company backed by Lockheed Martin Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, and Corning after raising $18.8M total - solving the fundamental problem of why no one wants to wear a computer on their face.