Our Team
Alan Liu
CEO, Co-Founder & Board Member
Alan is CEO and co-founder of Quintessent, where he and his team are building optical connectivity products that make AI infrastructure simpler, more reliable, and more scalable. Prior to founding Quintessent, he served as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he advised on optical interconnect R&D programs for DARPA and ARPA-E – agencies at the frontier of U.S. technological innovation. Alan holds a PhD from UC Santa Barbara, where he conducted pioneering research on quantum dot lasers for silicon photonics under the mentorship of Professor John Bowers.
Bob Nunn
COO & Board Member
Bob Nunn has helped build several successful start-up companies, including Vitesse Semiconductor (IPO), Fulcrum Microsystems (acquired by Intel), E2O Communications (acquired by JDSU), Nurlogic Design (Acquired by Artisan Components), among others. Most recently, Bob was CEO of Everactive, a start-up company building batteryless IoT solutions. Before Everactive, Bob was Managing Director at Intel Capital, focused on Data Center technologies, having joined Intel as part of their acquisition of Fulcrum Microsystems. Bob holds a BS in Computer Engineering from UCLA and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Brian Koch
VP OF ENGINEERING AND CO-FOUNDER
Brian Koch has over 20 years of expertise in the design, testing, and manufacturing of lasers and silicon photonics, with experience as an engineer, manager, and technical leader. He contributed to significant breakthroughs in silicon photonics at Juniper Networks, Aurrion (acquired by Juniper), and Intel’s Photonics Technology Lab. Brian earned his Ph.D. from UCSB, where he was co-advised by Professors John Bowers and Daniel Blumenthal.
Ramesh Senthinathan
VP OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Ramesh Senthinathan, Ph.D. is a visionary engineering executive with over 30 years of leadership experience driving the development of high‑performance, multi‑billion‑dollar systems‑on‑chip (SoCs), with deep expertise spanning x86, ARM, MIPS, GPU, DSP, and custom machine learning silicon. He has built, scaled, and led global central engineering teams across diverse tech sectors — from serving as Design Manager for Intel’s seminal Pentium Pro and Pentium III processors, to building central engineering at ATI Graphics and delivering the industry’s first volume‑production PCIe chipsets, to spearheading the first commercial 8x8 MIMO Wi‑Fi systems, advanced DWDM optical interconnect architectures, and Level 2 through Level 4 autonomous driving SoCs — with a proven track record across tech giants and successful startups.
John Garcia
DISTINGUISHED ENGINEER
Dr. Garcia is an expert in next-generation Silicon Photonic optical interconnect technology with over 13 years of industry experience. Throughout his career, he has developed deep expertise across PIC architecture design, advanced photonic control systems, and rigorous test and validation methodologies. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where his research focused on Optical Packet Switching.
Steven Estrella
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Steven Estrella, PhD, is the Director of Business Development at Quintessent, Inc., and is responsible for identifying and developing new market and product opportunities, sales and marketing of products, technology, and services, and managing the company’s public relations. Dr. Estrella has almost two decades of experience within the photonics industry, having previously worked at Freedom Photonics (acquired by Luminar Technologies in 2022) as a Senior Engineer, Technical Lead, Principal Investigator, Program Manager, and Director of Business Development. Dr. Estrella received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2022, where he investigated high-speed silicon photonics for use in harsh environments, with Professor Clint Schow as his advisor.
Manar Mohamed
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Manar joins Quintessent to grow the market for the company’s products. Manar is a commercial leader with 20 years of experience across sales, marketing, product management, and business development. Manar has deep semiconductor industry expertise, having spent 13 years at Intel, mainly within Intel’s data center business. During that time, he drove complex compute infrastructure design-wins and strategic partnerships with cloud hyperscale and enterprise customers. Manar started his career at GE, where he was part of the core team that built a healthcare information technology business that generated over $2 billion in annual revenue. Manar attended Purdue University, and received his MBA from Columbia University in New York City.
John Bowers
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD & CO-FOUNDER
John is a serial entrepreneur in the field of photonics and has co-founded Aurrion (acquired by Juniper Networks), Aerius Photonics (acquired by FLIR), Terabit Technologies (acquired by Ciena), Calient Technologies, and has been an advisor to many others. John currently holds appointments at the UCSB ECE/Materials departments, and also serves as Deputy CEO of AIM Photonics.
Gerd Goette
BOARD MEMBER
Gerd is a Senior Partner at Cycle Capital where he is responsible for sourcing and managing deep tech investments across North America and Europe. He spent over 25 years in venture capital and has extensive board experience. Earlier in his career he held a variety of operational roles in engineering, sales and general management. Gerd received a Masters of Electrical Engineering degree from Technical University in Darmstadt.
Alex Fang
BOARD MEMBER
Alex is a managing partner at Entrada Ventures and serves on the Board of Quintessent. Alex was co-founder and CEO of Aurrion, which was a company he co-founded with Professor John Bowers to commercialize his thesis work at UCSB. Alex led Aurrion from its inception all the way to its eventual acquisition by Juniper Networks.
Manny Stockman
BOARD MEMBER
Manny is a Partner at Osage University Partners. At OUP he has focused on investment opportunities across semiconductors, optics, and computing, and he is a board member or observer at Quintessent, Opsys, SiFive, and NuMat. He joined the venture world after a career developing optical sensor technologies at Lockheed Martin after receiving his PhD in Applied Physics and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University.
Milton Chang
ADVISOR
Milton is managing partner of Incubic and was previously president of Newport Corporation and New Focus, which he took public. The companies he incubated have resulted in six IPOs and seven acquisitions. Milton is a Trustee of Caltech and served on the SEC Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. He earned his BS from the University of Illinois and PhD from Caltech.
Chris Cole
ADVISOR
Chris is currently an Adviser to several optics companies. Previously he was Vice President, Advanced Development, Finisar Corp. (acquired by Coherent/II-VI) where he architected and led the development of 40, 100, 200 and 400 Gb/s Ethernet optical transceivers for Cloud Data Centers (DCs), and Carrier Central Offices (COs), leading to over $1 billion of Finisar and billions of optics industry revenue. Prior, at Hughes Aircraft (now Boeing), and Lincoln Laboratory he contributed to military communication satellites. At Acuson (now Siemens), he was an architect and senior manager of the first coherent ultrasound imager, which accounted for $5 billion in revenue.