The DMD Team
Richard Lang – General Manager
Richard Lang has more than 28 years experience in the design and development of microwave and millimetre-wave technology, components and sub-systems up to 100 GHz. He took on the role of General Manager of DMD (on secondment from Filtronic) in 2006. He joined Filtronic in October 1999, initially as Programmes Director, in its Comtek Division, and responsible for managing development of cellular base-station equipment; then as Technical Director in its defence division, responsible for a wide range of complex microwave sub-systems. Richard was Chairman of the IEE Electronics Division Professional Group Committee E12 (Microwave Devices & Techniques) from Oct. ‘93 to Sept. ‘96. He is now Theme Leader for Transduction Devices & Materials within the Electromagnetic Remote Sensing (EMRS) Defence Technology Centre.
Chris Wort – Business Development Manager
Chris is responsible for the market development of diamond electronic devices, including the high frequency MESFETs being developed by DMD and is also Technical Manager for Element Six Ltd. A physics graduate, Chris has been actively involved in all aspects of the development and commercialisation of CVD diamond since 1986. His considerable experience in diamond synthesis technology has culminated in more than 22 granted patents and more than 25 scientific publications. One of the highlights of his careers has been his role as project manager at E6 for the highly successful diamond missile dome development programme (jointly carried out with DERA) that was a finalist at the Flight International awards for “the most outstanding contribution to Military Aviation during the year 2000”.
Christopher Ogilvie Thompson – Executive Director
With a background in chemical engineering, Christopher has a wide breadth of experience in sales and management within high technology companies. Christopher is also Commercial Development Manager at Element Six. He brings strong experience in building new business opportunities and markets for synthetic diamond particularly for the new advanced engineering applications that are now possible as the result of technical breakthroughs in diamond synthesis. Christopher’s role will be to support the transition of research activities into product development and, ultimately, sales.
Steve Coe – Executive Director
Steve brings a wealth of experience in research to the DMD team. As Head of Research at Element Six and its general manager, he has guided key developments in synthetic diamond and combines this with management skills that will provide valuable support to DMD as the company develops and grows.
Wolfgang Bösch – Non-Executive Director
Dr. Wolfgang Bösch has been with Filtronic in the UK since 1999, currently as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Filtronic Integrated Products and Director of the Global Technology Group. His research interests include nonlinear systems, advanced linearization techniques, high efficiency power devices and amplifiers, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, front-end modules, advanced substrate and packaging technologies. Recently he has become also involved in optoelectronic and nano technologies. He is on the Supervisory Board of the EMRS Defence Technology Centre in the UK, a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Fellow of the IEE and a panel member of the EPSRC. He has published more than 30 papers and holds 4 patents.
Matthew O’Keefe - Consultant
Matthew O’Keefe is a member of the team that led to the collaboration between Element Six and Filtronic on diamond devices and leads the diamond process development activities for DMD. As well as his involvement with DMD, he is currently a Filtronic Fellow and Technology Development Manager, Optoelectronics. His main research interests include compound semiconductor process and device technology.
After graduating in 1990 he worked as a consultant for the University of Leeds Industrial Services working on the fabrication of millimetre-wave devices. In 1991 he joined the Corporate R&D group of M/A-COM Inc., Lowell, MA, USA, where he worked as a Principal Engineer responsible for materials and process engineering, integration, and trouble-shooting. In 1998 he returned to England working as a member of the yield and production team for the Automotive Sensor Group for M/A-COM Ltd. Matthew joined Filtronic Compound Semiconductors as a senior engineer within the Development Engineering Department in 1999. He is the author or coauthor of more than 40 technical publications and the holder of 6 patents.
Rob Davis - Consultant
Rob Davis leads the device design and characterisation activities within DMD, guiding the technology development based on the estimated performance of diamond devices. Rob has been with Filtronics Compound Semiconductors Ltd (FCSL) since December 2000 where he leads the team responsible for device design and modelling. A particular focus has been to concentrate on the power performance GaAs technology starting from a 0.5µm power GaAs HEMT process (FCSL’s first product line), leading on to a high-efficiency 0.3µm MMIC power process and recently on to a 0.15um millimetre-wave process with a high breakdown voltage that is currently under development.
From 1986 to 2000 Rob was employed by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA, now Qinetiq) where he was a Principal Scientist and Technical Leader of the power device activities. At DERA, Rob’s work included development of GaAs MESFETs, GaAs HBTs and wide band-gap devices using Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride.
Richard Balmer - Senior Scientist
Richard Balmer has been working as a senior scientist for Element Six Ltd since February 2006 and is the Programme Manager for Electronics within the R&D group. As such, Richard is responsible for delivering the research and material for several electronics projects including the MESFET activity working with DMD Ltd. Richard has more than 11 years experience researching the epitaxial growth of various III-V and wide bandgap materials using of number of growth techniques. He has more than 50 scientific publications in this field. Of particular note, Richard previously worked at QinetiQ where he was responsible for the GaN material growth that resulted in Europe-leading HFET device performance and Europe's first GaN MMIC (in collaboration with Daimler Chrysler).
Ian Friel - Research Scientist
Ian has been a research scientist within Element Six Ltd since May 2005. During this time he has been project manager on a number of R&D projects, including the development of ultra-high quality single crystal synthetic diamond for optical applications, and the development of a ‘tool-kit’ of processing techniques suitable for diamond electronic device fabrication. Currently, Ian is responsible for developing and advancing the epitaxial growth of the diamond MESFET structures under the DMD programme. Prior to joining Element Six Ltd Ian completed his PhD thesis which involved MBE growth and characterisation of III-nitride wide bandgap semiconductors for novel optoelectronic devices, publishing 14 scientific papers in the field.