ORFID Corporation Appoints Science and Engineering Advisory Board
LOS ANGELES, CA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 19, 2004--ORFID Corporation, a company developing enabling organic electronic
technology, announced today the appointment of six leading scientists and engineers to its newly formed Science
and Engineering Advisory Board (SEAB).
The SEAB will advise ORFID’s management on new developments and emerging technologies in fields impacting ORFID, such as chemistry, materials science, physics and electronics, and will serve as a sounding board for
vetting the company’s internal technology development and external technology acquisition strategies. The SEAB will also provide ORFID with high-level contacts within academia and industry worldwide.
Yang Yang, Ph.D., ORFID’s scientific founder and Professor at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, will serve as Chairman of the SEAB.
"I am excited by the opportunity to chair ORFID’s newly formed SEAB and to work with leaders from academia and industry who have been appointed as inaugural members," said Dr. Yang. He added, "Like the
industries in which ORFID competes, the SEAB is international in scope, with members from the U.S. and Japan."
Joining Dr. Yang on the SEAB will be Alan H. Cowley, Ph.D., of the University of Texas at Austin, Robert H. Grubbs, Ph.D, of the California Institute of Technology, Junji Kido, Ph.D. of Yamagata University in Japan, Walter Mosher, Ph.D., of Precision Dynamics Corp., and Richard S. Payne, Ph.D., of Polychromix, Inc.
Dr. Mosher, a technology visionary who built the company he founded, Precision Dynamics, into a world leader in
personal identification management systems, said of ORFID’s new SEAB, "I am proud to be a part of this new Advisory
Board and to know that technology to which I have dedicated a considerable portion of my professional career will
now benefit from the input of such high-caliber scientists and engineers."
Dr. Mosher is a leading industry proponent of RFID (radio frequency identification), a rapidly evolving field which is expected to benefit from new, lower-cost production methods based upon organic electronics. Precision Dynamics, which was founded in 1956 by Dr. Mosher, is itself a co-founder of and co-investor in ORFID.
Biographical Profiles of ORFID’s SEAB Members
Yang Yang, Ph.D., is scientific co-founder of ORFID Corporation, a member of its Board of Directors and Chairman of its Science and Engineering Advisory Board. Dr. Yang is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA. His research focuses on conjugated
polymers and organics, polymer LEDs, and other related polymer electronic, photonic, and bio-devices. He has published more than 80 referred papers, given more than 40 invited presentations on his research work and has received several US patents. He has received awards and honors including the NSF Career Award, 1998 and
the 3M Young Investigator Award, 1998. Prior to joining UCLA as an Assistant Professor in 1997, he was a device physicist at UNIAX Corporation, now called DuPont Display. Also, he joined Prof. Bryan Kohler’s group at UC-Riverside as a post-doctoral researcher from December 1991 to September 1992. Professor Yang received his
B.S. in Physics from the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan in 1981, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from University of Massachusetts-Lowell, 1988 and 1992 respectively.
Alan H. Cowley, Ph.D., the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the Royal Society of Chemistry Award for Main-Group Element Chemistry, 1980; Centenary Medal and Lectureship, Royal Society of Chemistry, 1986; American Chemical
Society Southwest Regional Award, 1986; Stiefvater Memorial Award and Lectureship, University of Nebraska, 1987; Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 1988 (Britain’s National Academy); Chemical Pioneer Award of the American Institute of Chemists, 1994; and the von Humboldt Prize, 1995. He is the author of over 460 publications
in a wide range of areas within the field of main-group organo-metallic chemistry. From 1988-1989, he was the Sir Edward Frankland Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Imperial College, London, England. Prior to Imperial College, he was at The University of Texas at Austin, where he held the following positions: Assistant Professor
of Chemistry, 1962-1967, Associate Professor of Chemistry, 1967-1970, Professor of Chemistry, 1970-1984, George W. Watt Centennial Professor of Chemistry, 1984-1988. During the years 1960-1961 he was a Technical Officer with the Exploratory Group of Imperial Chemical Industries (Billingham Division), England. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow,
and later an Instructor at the University of Florida during the period 1958-1960. Professor Cowley received the following degrees: Bachelor of Science with Honors in chemistry in 1955, Master of Science in 1956, and Doctor of Philosophy in 1958, from the University of Manchester, England. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Bordeaux, France in 2003.
Junji Kido, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department Polymer Science and Engineering at the Yamagata University in Japan. His pioneering research is focused on design and fabrication of novel organic light emitting devices (OLEDs). Professor Kido is the General Director of the Research Institute for Organic Electronics at Yamagata Prefecture.
He is also the Project Leader for the National Project on Development of Advanced Organic Devices for Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (MITI). Professor Kido is a member of the Japan Society of Applied Physics, the Japan Chemical Society, the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, the Rare Earth Society of Japan and the Society for Information
Display. Professor Kido’s awards have included the Sakurai Award of theOptoelectronic Industry and Technology Development Association, JAPAN; the Special Recognition Award of the Society for Information Display, USA; The Award of the Society of Polymer Science, JAPAN; and the Young Investigator Award of the Society of Polymer Science, JAPAN. He received
his B.S. in Applied Chemistry from Waseda University in Tokyo and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York.
Walter Mosher, Ph.D., is Chairman of Board and Chief Technology Officer of Precision Dynamics Corporation (PDC), which he co-founded in 1956. PDC was established to manufacture and distribute products in the health care field. Dr. Mosher served as President of Precision Dynamics Corporation from 1957 through 2002. Until 1971, Dr. Mosher was a faculty
member of UCLA. During his tenure at UCLA, he served as a Director of the Urban Ecology and Transportation Group at the Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering. Dr. Mosher also served as a consultant to the Federal Government in its initial activities associated with setting up the National Highway Safety Bureau in the Department of Transportation.
In 1971, Dr. Mosher assumed full-time management of Precision Dynamics Corporation. Since that time annual sales have increased about 100 fold to $50 million. Dr. Mosher holds several patents in the patient identification field and has numerous publications in the field of highway safety and traffic flow theory. In addition to his responsibilities at Precision
Dynamics Corporation, Dr. Mosher is a Member of the CALTRANS Airspace Advisory Committee, Director of the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), Director of the Valley Family Center, a member of the Executive Board, Board of Directors, and Past Chair of the Valley Industry Commerce Association, Board member and member of various advisory and technical
committees for the Health Industry Business Communications Council, AdvaMed Board and Technical & Regulatory Committee member, Board member of Valley Economic Development Center, Board member of the San Fernando Policy Advisory Council, Founder of the Mobile Technology Laboratory program, Vice Chairman of the Southern California Biomedical Council (SCBC), Board and
Executive Board member of Economic Alliance as well as co-chair of the Economic Alliance Education & Workforce Development Committee. He received his Ph.D. in 1971 from the School of Engineering at UCLA. His fields of specialization are applied mathematics, computer technology and transportation flow theory.
Robert H. Grubbs, Ph.D., is the Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Grubbs’s pioneering research in the area of synthetic chemistry has been the basis of several successful technology start-ups. Professor Grubbs was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Grubbs’ awards have included the ACS National Award in Organometallic Chemistry, the ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry (Mobil Chemical Company), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (The Franklin Institute), the Arthur C. Cope Award (ACS Division of Organic Chemistry), the ACS Award for Creative Research in Homogenous or Heterogeneous Catalysis (Shell Oil
Foundation), the Pauling Award Medal (Oregon, Portland, Puget Sound Sections of ACS), the ACS Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry, the Alfred Sloan Fellowship, the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, ACS. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from University of Florida and M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University.
Richard S. Payne, Ph.D., is Vice President of Engineering and Manufacturing at Polychromix, Inc., an advanced communications technology company. Prior to joining Polychromix, Dr. Payne served at OMM, Inc., an all-optical switching company for telecommunications, as Chief Scientist and General Manager of East Coast operations. In this role, he was instrumental
in developing and qualifying the first MEMS optical switch device that passed stringent Telcordia standards. Before OMM, Dr. Payne was Chief Technical Officer for Cyrano Sciences, Inc. In this position he was responsible for implementing technologies developed at Cal Tech and productizing the effort. Prior to Cyrano Sciences, Dr. Payne served at Analog Devices as Director
of Manufacturing Micromachines Development for the Semiconductor division, and as a division Fellow where he was responsible for the development of the first commercial surface micro-machined acceleration sensor using MEMS technologies. He has also worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories, heading the company’s CMOS technology effort. Dr. Payne was awarded the J. J. Ebers award by
the IEEE Electron Devices Society for pioneering work in CMOS. He serves on the Board of Directors of IC Mechanics.
About ORFID Corporation
ORFID is a privately held company developing novel organic electronic devices that are dramatically less costly to manufacture and far more versatile than today’s largely silicon-based products. ORFID’s technology will enable the manufacture of new products such as electronic smart labels, flexible displays, intelligent packaging, digital textiles, biosensors, and medical
devices. The company's suite of technologies for development and processing of organic electronics have the potential to improve substantially the economics of the electronics industry. ORFID is based in Los Angeles and can be found on the web at
www.orfid.com.
