Matt Thomas is co-founder of Illumitex and has served as the company’s president and CEO since its inception in 2005. In this role, he has led the strategic vision and tactical operations of the firm, raising more than $20M in venture capital to date.

Prior to Illumitex, Matt Thomas served as Director of Business Development at the Southeastern Universities Research Association in Washington, DC, leading SURA’s technology transfer efforts and negotiating licensing deals for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Jefferson Lab. During his tenure, he created SURAfund, a program designed to increase deal flow for VC firms looking at early-stage spinouts from universities across the country.

Before joining SURA in 2002, Mr. Thomas led the operations and manufacturing team at Sydcor Enterprises as Chief Operating Officer. The Texas-based start-up provided inventory management services to Dell, Samsung and others, growing in annual sales by a factor of ten during his two-year tenure by securing new service contracts, adding new product lines, and creating a production facility in Malaysia. Prior to Sydcor, he served as Marketing Manager at Applied Science Fiction (acquired by Kodak), analyzing key growth markets and developing product portfolio strategies for digital imaging markets. Mr. Thomas began his career as a design engineer at global manufacturer 3M Company.

Mr. Thomas received an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. He received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University, focusing his thesis on the design and development of high-speed optical imaging systems.

Dung Duong’s unique vision on optoelectronic devices comes from his extensive experience in designing diffraction-limited broad-spectrum imaging and high brightness non-imaging optics.

Prior to joining the Illumitex team, Mr. Duong was part of the Advance Technologies Group at Austin, Texas-based Luminex Corporation, where he successfully designed, prototyped and tested the illumination, imaging optic, mechanics and industrial design of a smaller, lighter and more portable detection platform for the company’s XMap technology.  Mr. Duong also designed and prototyped the imaging and illumination optics of an advanced bioterror detection platform utilizing deep UV LEDs.

Mr. Duong consulted at Raytheon-owned Elcan Optical Technologies, where he designed a variety of imaging optics including bioculars, short-wave, mid-wave, and far IR optics. He was intimately involved with the illumination and projection optics for the ruggedized DLP display. Earlier in his professional career, Mr. Duong was the principal optics designer at Kodak Austin Development Center (previously Applied Science Fiction).

Mr. Duong received degrees in both Applied Optics and Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Prior to joining the Illumitex team, Judd Rabb served as the Corporate Controller for renewable energy innovators Green Mountain Energy Company, which was acquired by NRG, Inc in 2010. Previous positions included tenure as CFO for Coldwatt, Inc., a hardware-based start-up company, acquired by Flextronics, Inc. Mr. Rabb was also the Corporate Controller of Silicon Laboratories, where he helped take the company through its initial public offering. Mr. Rabb began his career at the accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand. Mr. Rabb is a member of Financial Executives International and is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in the State of Texas.

Mr. Rabb received a bachelor’s of business administration degree in Accounting from Texas A&M University.

Prior to joining the iIllumitex team, Randall Johnson held the position of Vice President of Global Procurement for Gateway, Inc., where he was responsible for the direct procurement of all materials used in the manufacture of the company’s personal computer products.

Mr. Johnson’s other professional experience includes tenure as Sr. Vice President of Procurement, Quality and Planning with Amkor Technologies, a contract manufacturer that provides assembly and test services for the semiconductor industry. In this role, he was responsible for consolidating and leveraging Amkor’s global spend resulting in significant reductions in the cost of materials. Other positions held by Mr. Johnson within the personal computer and semiconductor industries include Director of Manufacturing Engineering, Director of Supply Chain Management, Director of Procurement and Manager of Engineering and R&D with Compaq Computer and Texas Instruments. He has published papers in electronics packaging technology and holds several patents in semiconductor process equipment design and electronics packaging.

Mr. Johnson received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Southern Methodist University.

Most recently at PMC-Sierra, Angie Gallagher was responsible for the global management of the Dell Account, focused on development of the Enterprise and Storage products business. From 2000 – 2009, she was the Sales Manager at OM Associates where she was responsible for identifying new prospective manufacturers to represent, and managing a team of sales people who won designs at Dell, IBM, Cisco, National Instruments among others.

Ms. Gallagher’s additional professional experience includes Director of Sales at Mitsubishi Electronics America, where she was instrumental in developing sales in emerging markets as well as driving growth of sales at Compaq and Dell by record percentages. Prior to that, she worked at Texas Instruments and was responsible for sales to IBM in Boca Raton, FL.

Ms. Gallagher received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.

Before joining the Illumitex team, Mr. Klase held a variety of management roles at Acuity Brands Lighting. In 2010 he completed a nine-year tenure at the company by serving as General Manager of Outdoor Controls, a position that included managing profit & loss operations for two business segments. Prior to becoming General Manager, he held management positions in Business Development, Margin Management and Strategic Pricing. He was a founding member of the Acuity Business System, the company’s lean manufacturing and continuous improvement program. The company’s most distinguished award, the Chairman’s Award, was presented to Mr. Klase in 2003.

In 2000, Mr. Klase joined PointeOne Telecommunications where he was responsible for deploying company-wide pricing programs. Prior to that, he began his professional career in a similar role with Williams Communications Group.

Mr. Klase received his MBA from Emory University. He received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Theology from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Throughout his professional career, Dr. Steven Konsek has developed innovative, game-changing technologies across a range of semiconductor applications, including LED technology, process integration, device physics and technical management.

Most recently, Dr. Konsek was Sr. Vice President and Chief of Technical Staff at GLO, a nanowire LED venture company in Sweden, where he led the full technical program including epitaxy, processing, test and characterizations teams. Under his leadership, Glo was recognized as one of Europe’s leading LED startups targeting the general lighting market.

Dr. Konsek served as the Director of Device Research & Development at Nantero, a Boston, Massachusetts-based semiconductor company, where he directed the development of nano-scale memory devices from laboratory to fab-transfer with industrial partners. Dr. Konsek holds several patents and has authored numerous articles on topics related to LED technology, memory, process integration and nanoscale devices.

Mr. Konsek received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington and received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Purdue University.