Dr. John D. Evans
Dr. John D. Evans is Chief Executive Officer of Carillon Technologies, and its OTenna Technologies and ReflecTek Inc. companies. Carillon was founded in 2017 to accelerate the identification, adaption and deployment of cutting-edge commercial technologies to achieve government’s most important missions. With investors including Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, and Intellectual Ventures, a global leader in the business of innovation, Carillon is pioneering new ways to align incentives between DoD and commercial industries, allowing DoD access to commercial technologies, and unlocking new forms of capital to drive commercial technology development.
Dr. Evans is a global executive and award-winning leader in the strategic management of technology and innovation with more than 30 years’ experience across both commercial and defense industries. Prior to founding Carillon, he served as Corporate Vice President, Technology, Corporate Vice President, Business Innovation, and Vice President, International Engineering and Technology at Lockheed Martin Corporation. During his tenure, he oversaw development of the Corporation’s commercial market strategies in Autonomous Systems, Big Data and Healthcare. He established Lockheed Martin’s innovation function, which grew into the CTO office’s largest initiative in under two years. He also established the company’s Center for Innovation and Security Solutions (CISS) in Abu Dhabi, UAE; the F-35 Virtual Analysis Laboratories in the United Kingdom and Australia; and was responsible for overseeing the creation of 75 international technology partnerships across 20 countries.
Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, Dr. Evans spent 6 years as a Program Manager for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he was awarded the DARPA Significant Technical Innovation Award. Previously, he was Chief Technical Officer for the West Coast venture-funded start-up Microfabrica, lead MEMS Scientist at Becton Dickinson; and Energy Policy Consultant to the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment.
Dr. Evans has served on a number of boards, including the Board of Trustees for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the Board of Directors of the Innovation Research Interchange (IRI) and the Advisory Board at the Hudson Institute. He is a member of the ASME, IEEE and has fellowships at AIAA, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies (PIPS) and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSIS). He was the recipient of the Maurice Holland Innovation Award and the Office of Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service and holds 13 United States patents.
Dr. Evans earned a BA degree in physics from Carleton College; an MS in civil engineering and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley; and an MBA from Duke University.
Dr. John R. Sanford
Dr. John R. Sanford is a Chief Technologist for Carillon Technologies and its OTenna Technologies and ReflecTek Inc. companies. Dr. Sanford specializes in using advanced artificial intelligence methods, combined with cutting edge electromagnetic modeling, to develop products with performance that would be impossible to realize using conventional techniques. He has led or participated in five successful equity events (2 IPOs and 3 acquisitions) for companies where he was either a prime or a senior contributor. Dr. Sanford also serves as a professor of practice with the University of California San Diego, advises a several companies in the wireless industry, and manages the asset portfolio of Smartwaves Investments.
Until recently, Dr. Sanford was Chief Technical Officer of Ubiquiti Networks where he developed next-generation wireless communications systems. Prior to that, he was president of Optimal RF which was acquired by Cushcraft Corporation and subsequently acquired by Laird Technologies. He was also CTO of REMEC, Inc. where he developed the technology roadmap, IP and strategic partnerships and ran the company’s Fixed Wireless Access Division. Prior to that, he founded Smartwaves International, which was acquired by REMEC in February 1999.
Dr. Sanford has also served as an Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology where he taught and conducted research related to Electromagnetics, Antennas and Array Signal Processing (MIMO). Previously, he headed the Mobile Tower Top Group at Huber & Suhner AG, where he invented a range of mobile communications products that have become industry norms. From 1985 to 1988 he was a group manager with the Georgia Tech Research Institute where he designed military phased arrays and communication systems.
Dr. Leo Z. Zornberg
Dr. Leonardo Z. Zornberg is Lead Photonics Engineer for OTenna Technologies. Dr. Zornberg began his research career as an undergraduate researcher at the California Institute of Technology, where he studied nanotechnology under Professor Paul A. Rothemund, and optical materials and earned a BS degree in chemical engineering under Professor Harry A. Atwater. He performed his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he conducted research in the field of nanotechnology and optical materials and completed his Ph.D. thesis on optical interactions in self-assembling systems.
While earning his degrees, Dr. Zornberg worked as an intern at Medtronic Inc, where he investigated insulin stability in insulin pumps to treat patients with diabetes, and at Electroninks, where he worked to develop particle-free conductive inks. In addition to his research efforts, he served as a teaching assistant at the California Institute of Technology for both Separation Processes and Transport Phenomena. At MIT, he volunteered as an instrument steward, where he was responsible for the maintenance and user training of a UV-Vis spectrophotometer and a spectroscopic ellipsometer.
Dr. Zornberg graduated with honors from the California Institute of Technology and received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was awarded the Thomas Lorde Fellowship and the Exceptional First-Year Performance award from Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Additionally, Dr. Zornberg placed 2nd in MIT’s MADMEC material prototyping competition in 2017, 2018, and 2019. His research has been published in a variety of journals including Nature and Advanced Materials, and he has been awarded one United States patent.