EXECUTIVE TEAM

Dr. Lawandy is the founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Dr. Lawandy started his career at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where he was a pioneer in the development of sub-millimeter optically pumped lasers. From 1981 to 1999, Dr. Lawandy was a tenured full professor of Engineering and Physics at Brown University where his work focused on instabilities in single and multimode lasers and a wide spectrum of non-linear optics and atom-field interaction problems. In addition to Spectra Systems Corporation, he has founded two other companies, Spectra Disc Corporation and Solaris Nanosciences, and has raised over $80 million in investment capital.  

Dr. Lawandy holds a BA in Physics, and an MSc and Ph.D. in Chemistry, all from The Johns Hopkins University. He has authored over 180 reviewed scientific papers and is an inventor on over 80 US and foreign issued patents. His entrepreneurial and scientific work has been covered in several high profile publications including the London Financial Times, The Economist, Scientific American, Science News, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Fox News and BBC Television. He has also received a Presidential Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Cottrell Award, a Rolex Award for Enterprise and a Samuel Slater Award for Innovation.

Dr. Goltsos has been Spectra’s Vice President, Engineering, from April 2000 to the present. From September 1996 to April 2000, he served as a Senior Systems Engineer for Spectra. Prior to that, from 1992 to 1996, Dr. Goltsos served as a Staff Member of the MIT/Lincoln Laboratory’s Optical Communications Group. Dr. Goltsos holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University (1987), an M.S. in Physics from Brown University (1983), and a B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1981).

Edward Spies is an experienced accounting and finance professional with over 25 years of expertise in financial planning and analysis, mergers and acquisitions, and business process improvement. He brings decades of experience in the technology industry, having started his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and worked in various finance leadership roles since then. Recently, he served as CFO of Mearthane Products Corporation, a polymer component manufacturer. Prior to that, he held positions as a Corporate Controller and VP of Finance at several VC and PE backed portfolio companies. He also helped build the CFO services practice for CFGI and embarked on a successful consulting career providing accounting and finance support for start-up and publicly traded companies.

Mr. Spies has considerable expertise in manufacturing, cost and profit margin analysis, and financial management. He earned his CPA earlier in his career and holds a bachelor’s degree from Clarkson University and an MBA/MS in Accounting from Northeastern University.