Simon Fafard, Ph.D.

Dr. Simon Fafard has more than 20 years of Semiconductor and Optoelectronics experience covering the complete product development cycle: an established scientist with vision and recognized globally with accomplishments from innovative R&D, material research and engineering, new product design and prototyping, with deep knowledge of target markets from experience in technical customer support and product line management.

He established a prestigious nano-optics program when he was a Senior Research Officer in the national lab of IMS/NRC. He worked on new product introduction at startups such as Kymata Canada and in an established company with a complete portfolio of state-of-the-art products as a product Line Manager at Alcatel Optronics. Dr. Fafard invented the use of self-assembled quantum in devices such as multi-junction solar cells. He founded Cyrium in 2002, and raised $20M of funding, establishing the company has a leader now producing the highest efficiency solar cells based on this invention and currently achieving record efficiencies over 40% in production.

Dr. Fafard was an NSERC Postdoc fellow at the NSF-funded QUEST center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and he holds a Ph.D. in Physics from University of Ottawa. He published over 135 articles in the scientific literature, wrote book chapters and several patents in the field of Nanostuctures.