Mary Hibbs Brenner
Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Hibbs-Brenner brings over 22 years of proven expertise guiding innovative semiconductor and optical technologies into the commercial market.

Prior to co-founding Vixar, Dr. Hibbs-Brenner held business development, technical management, and research positions at Honeywell. She was responsible for initiating the company’s VCSEL business, and held the position of Director of Research and Development within that business.

The Honeywell VCSEL business experienced rapid growth. VCSEL products from Honeywell and others helped to fuel the growth of the Internet by becoming the laser source of choice for Local Area Networks (LANs) and Storage Area Networks (SANs). This business was sold to Finisar in 2004. Dr. Hibbs-Brenner also served as a business development lead within the Honeywell Technology organization, developing business plans for bringing new technologies to market.

Dr. Hibbs-Brenner has an MBA from the Carlson School of Business, University of Minnesota, a Ph.D. in Materials Science from Stanford University, and a B. A. in Physics from Carleton College. She spent two years doing post-doctoral research at the University of Linköping, Linköping, Sweden.

Dr. Hibbs-Brenner has seven patents, and over 50 publications and invited presentations.

Klein L. Johnson
Founder, Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Johnson is a co-founder of Vixar. He brings a rich background of technical and engineering leadership in optoelectronic chip design and development. His 12 year career at Honeywell as a research scientist and project leader spanned a broad range of research and development optoelectronic device and packaging efforts, high speed VCSEL chip and package design, including the development of polymer and glass waveguides, a very high bandwidth array transceiver, optoelectronic integrated circuits, and rugged packaging for military applications.

Dr. Johnson has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and a B. A. in Mathematics and Physics from St. Olaf College.

Dr. Johnson has 3 patents, 7 patent applications, and is the author/co-author of multiple papers and conference presentations.

Wade Campbell
Executive Vice President, Market Development

Mr. Campbell has an extensive background in product, market, and channel strategy development, business planning, and operational execution in technology industries ranging from computer systems to components. His executive-level experience at large companies (e.g., Dell’s server/storage division and Intel’s server division) as well as small-to-medium sized companies and startups (e.g., ATCA-based telecom equipment, I/O subsystems, flash-based SSDs) provides expertise required to guide a technology company through every stage of its growth.

William Hogan
Manager, Product Development

Mr. Hogan oversees all of the product and package development for Vixar products. He has 30 years of experience working in electro-optics, including fiber optic communications and optical disk technology at IBM, JDSU, Rohm and Haas, Nuvotronics, and Vixar. He brings to the product development effort both depth and breadth of expertise spanning optoelectronic packaging, reliability evaluation, and system integration of optoelectronic components, integrated circuits, electrical, optical and mechanical design. He has been granted 44 patents and is the co-author of numerous technical papers and conference presentations. Mr. Hogan has an M.S. in Optical Engineering from the University of Arizona, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University.

Matthew Dummer
Manager, Optoelectronic Device Design

Dr. Dummer is responsible for the design of unique optoelectronic devices forming the basis of Vixar products. He has 10 years of experience in the design, fabrication, test, packaging and integration of high speed optoelectronic devices. As part of his thesis research at the University of Santa Barbara he demonstrated high functionality photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for photocurrent-driven wavelength conversion and monolithically integrated tunable transceivers operating up to 40 Gb/s. He is the author or co-author of over 20 publications and conference presentations. Dr. Dummer received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota.

Charles Steidl
Manager of Quality and Reliability

Mr. Steidl is responsible for ensuring that the product shipped by Vixar meets our customer quality and reliability requirements. He has 10 years of experience at Boston Scientific in integrated circuit test development and validation for Class III medical devices. While at Boston Scientific he was a statistical subject matter expert who mentored other engineers in the use of statistical tools such as Measurement System Analysis (MSA) to promote data driven decision making and improved quality. In particular, he developed a failure analysis and process monitor program that earned him a Boston Scientific Quality Excellence Award. Mr. Steidl has M.S. and B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota.