Block Engineering Management Team

Daniel J. Cavicchio, Jr., Chairman of the Board

Dr. Cavicchio holds a B.S. Degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He was an Engagement Manager at the consulting firm of McKinsey & Company and Director of Business Development at American Can Company. Dr. Cavicchio co-founded Greenwich Venture Partners, Inc., and subsequently acquired Commonwealth Sprague Capacitor, Inc., a power capacitor company, and Block Engineering. At Block he directs strategy, programs and customer interfaces.

Petros Kotidis, Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Kotidis holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautics from MIT, where he also minored in Management & Finance at the Sloan School, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. He has been awarded 18 patents in laser-based, ultrasonic and spectroscopic devices and applications, and has led the introduction of many electro-optical devices to market. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development of Axsun Technologies, Director of Strategic Technologies and Ventures at Nortel Networks, and Director, New Products and Business Ventures Group, at Textron Systems Corporation.

Erik Deutsch, Vice President of Engineering

Dr. Deutsch earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT and his B.A. in physics from Vassar College. He was a co-founder at Polychromix, where he oversaw all MEMS development efforts. Dr. Deutsch has extensive experience in micro-optical devices and has been instrumental in their design, development and commercialization. He leads all engineering efforts at Block and is also responsible for bringing the new MEMS and laser-based instruments to market.

Ninghui Zhu, Vice President of Manufacturing and Packaging

Dr. Zhu obtained both his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from State University of New York at Stony Brook, and B.S. from Nanjing University of Technology, P.R.China, all in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Zhu brings to Block his extensive experience in the fields of optoelectronic packaging and low cost manufacturing, while working at companies, such as Santur, Intel, EM4, LightChip and Lasertron, which brought to market some of the most complex micro-optical devices today. Dr Zhu leads all packaging and manufacturing efforts at Block for the current and future products.

Adam Erlich, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development

Adam Erlich holds M.A. degrees from George Washington University in Technology Policy/Management and from Columbia University. He earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. Adam was founder and president of Igeneco, a marketing and business development consulting firm, which worked with dozens of companies in commercializing technologies. Igeneco also played a lead role in successful M&A activities. Earlier in his career, Adam was an initial employee at Digital Optics, where he was in charge of developing the market for lithographically fabricated optics. He drove the company's dramatic revenue growth from $200K to $10M.

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