Board of Directors

Alex Fang, PhD, Chairman of the Board

Alex is the General Partner of Entrada Ventures, a late seed stage fund. Previously, Alex was co-founder and CEO of Aurrion, a fabless semiconductor company that developed photonic integrated circuits for use in data center networking applications.  The business was acquired by Juniper Networks.  Alex earned his masters and PhD from UCSB.

John Baumann, ThinGap CEO and Board Member

John joined ThinGap as CEO in January 2019 and became a Board Member soon after.  His background is in corporate finance, operations and organizational leadership and has held roles as CFO, GM and CEO with several public and private high-tech companies.  He also worked for a large private equity firm. John has undergrad and master’s level degrees in Business Administration. Email: [email protected]

John Bowers, PhD, Board Member

Dr. Bowers is Director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UCSB. He was previously CTO and co-founder of Calient Networks and received master and PhD. degrees from Stanford University.  He has published eight books, over 450 journal papers and 700 conference papers, and has received 52 patents.

Jon Geske, PhD, Board Member

Jon founded and was President of Aerius Photonics from 2003 until its acquisition by FLIR Systems in 2011.  He currently is Vice President of Research for Attollo Engineering, a developer of opto-electronic devices and systems.  Jon earned his PhD from the UCSB and BS from USC.

Milton Chang, PhD, Board Member

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.

Robert Mastromattei, Board Member

Rob is a 30 year veteran of the electric motors industry, including having successfully co-founded and run Applimotion, a high performance motor kit company that was eventually sold to Novanta Inc. in 2015.  Rob has both undergrad and master’s level degrees in engineering.

Chuck Bischof, Board Member

Chuck is a seasoned operations executive with diversified experience in high-tech industries.  Chuck most recently served as a Vice President with Agilent Technologies and has earned both an undergrad and master’s level degrees in Business Administration.

Tara Holbrook, Board Member

Tara and her husband George are long-time investors in ThinGap and are associated with Bradley Resources Company, a venture capital firm specializing in investments in technology, medical devices, natural resource, and power plant development sectors.