Michael Lebby 
Dr. Michael S. Lebby has deep experience running and leading technology companies, especially those developing, manufacturing and productizing new platform technologies. Dr. Lebby’s experience includes research, development, volume scale, marketing, sales, finance, and corporate activities both with management as well as at a board director level. Dr. Lebby’s technical acumen stems from his entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial skills working throughout his career in both large corporate organizations as well as venture backed start-ups and public companies.
Dr. Lebby is considered an expert in the fields of semiconductors, electronics, optoelectronics/photonics, and optical systems – acting as a technical expert to the European Commission. Dr. Lebby’s career started in telecommunications at the prestigious RSRE Malvern research labs, later working at AT&T Bell Labs in photonics. At Motorola in the 1990s he drove the development, including the first patent co-authorship of the oxide VCSEL diode laser which is now widely used in laser mice, 3D/structured sensing in mobile phones and optical interconnects.
Dr. Lebby has run and led several technological start-ups such as Ignis Optics, One Chip Photonics, Translucent Photonics as well as groups in Motorola, Tyco Electronics, AT&T, Intel and others. He is a Fellow of NAI, IEEE and Optica and is a board member for Optica. He is also Chair of Optic’s Corporate Engagement Counsel, a board of industry representatives to further business activity in the sector.
James S. Marcelli
Mr. Marcelli has serves as Lightwave Logic, Inc., President and Chief Operating Officer, and he was named our Secretary in March 2018. Previously, from August 2008 to April 2012, Mr. Marcelli served as Lightwave’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Marcelli is in charge of the day-to-day operations of Lightwave, and also serves as its principal financial officer. Over the last thirty five years, he has served as the president and chief executive officer of multiple start-up and growth companies in high tech manufacturing and business services, including two companies that were founded by him. In addition, he has held senior management positions with several companies including Teradyne Corporation and Sanmina Corporation. Throughout his career, he has held positions in Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Operations and Finance. Mr. Marcelli served as a mentor for the National Science Foundation, NFS Innovation Program. Mr. Marcelli has served on the boards of several non-profit corporations and also served on the Advisory Board of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Engineering School.
John Zyskind
Dr. John Zyskind is a 40-year veteran of the telecom and data communications industries with vast experience with systems, transceiver design, silicon foundries, integrated photonics, and reliability. Previously he was Vice President of Engineering, Quality and Reliability at Skorpios, where he led the due diligence and selection of the company’s foundry partners for fabrication of its Silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs), as well as PIC qualification and reliability testing. Prior to Skorpios, Dr. Zyskind served in engineering leadership positions at Bell Laboratories, Sycamore Networks, Optovia (the assets of which were later acquired by JDSU) and Mintera (later acquired by Oclaro). Dr. Zyskind’s projects included seminal work on the development of optical amplifiers for wavelength division multiplexed systems, high-capacity long-haul WDM telecommunication systems, and high-capacity optical transceiver modules for the data communication and data center markets.
Atikem Haile
Atikem Haile is a senior technology marketing professional with extensive experience delivering revenue and market share growth for Fortune 100, mid-sized and start-up technology companies. Proven track record built on a unique combination of technology, financial and business skills derived from 20+ years of global technology and venture capital industry experience, as well as MBA (Darden/UVA) and technical undergraduate degrees. Hands-on experience in predicting and responding to trends, opportunities and risks in business.
