Management Team

Jonathan Klamkin is CEO and Director of Aeluma. He has been a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2015-present), where he conducts pioneering research in integrated photonics and optoelectronics, and serves as Director of the UCSB Nanofabrication Facility. Dr. Klamkin was with BinOptics Corp., a laser diode manufacturer that was acquired by Macom in 2015, where he served as an optoelectronic device design and test engineer. He also held positions at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Boston University, and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. Jonathan is the recipient of numerous awards including the NASA Young Faculty Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the DARPA Director’s Fellowship. He has published nearly 300 papers, holds 40 issued and pending patents, and has given more than 100 invited, keynote, or plenary presentations to industry, government and the academic community. Dr. Klamkin holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Ph.D. in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Christopher Stewart, CFO of Aeluma, brings over 20 years of financial leadership experience at public and high-growth companies. Most recently, he served as CFO at LeddarTech Holdings Inc., an AI-driven software company that Stewart helped lead through a public market debut. Prior roles include CFO of Bionano Genomics, Inc., which achieved 62% compound annual revenue growth during his tenure, as well as senior financial leadership roles at Maxwell Technologies (acquired by Tesla), Entropic Communications (acquired by Maxlinear), and Intel. Mr. Stewart holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and an M.B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Christiane Poblenz, VP of Materials Operations, has 25 years of experience in epitaxial materials development for semiconductor laser technologies. She joins Aeluma from a 17-year career at Kyocera SLDLaser, Inc., formerly Soraa Laser Diode Inc, where she most recently served as Senior Director of Epitaxy. KSLD specializes in laser diode technology for next-generation display, automotive, and specialty applications. Dr. Poblenz led epitaxy operations and engineering through multiple stages of company growth, including scaling epitaxy from development to automotive-qualified production and through the company’s acquisition by Kyocera Corporation in 2021. Dr. Poblenz holds a Ph.D. in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Willy Rachmady leads strategic partnerships, foundry ecosystem development, and technology commercialization at Aeluma, spanning the company’s silicon photonics and compound semiconductor platforms. Dr. Rachmady brings more than 20 years of technical and strategic leadership in advanced semiconductor technologies. Prior to Aeluma, he served as a senior technical leader at Intel Corporation, where he drove corporate-wide initiatives shaping technology and product roadmaps, strategic investments, and ecosystem partnerships. His contributions encompass advanced CMOS process development, 3D wafer stacking, heterogeneous integration, and compound semiconductor device technologies, including III-V and germanium platforms. He is a named inventor on more than 350 U.S. patents. At Aeluma, Dr. Rachmady focuses on scaling manufacturing ecosystem partnerships, driving commercial opportunities across the company's III-V-based product portfolio, and expanding Aeluma's intellectual property and technology roadmap. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

As VP of Engineering, Brendan Moran leads Aeluma’s engineering organization. Leveraging more than two decades of experience scaling advanced optoelectronic products, Dr. Moran will drive the commercialization and manufacturing readiness of Aeluma's compound semiconductor platforms. He joins Aeluma following a distinguished 18-year career at Lumileds, where he most recently served as Senior Director of R&D, leading global cross-functional development teams. Throughout his tenure, he was instrumental in bringing cutting-edge technologies into many high-volume, fast-ramping products for the mobile and consumer electronics markets. Dr. Moran holds a Ph.D. in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Matthew Dummer, Director of Technology, has over 20 years of experience in optoelectronic device design and manufacturing. He currently oversees a highly qualified team of engineers responsible for new technology development, IP strategy, and scalable production solutions.  Prior to joining Aeluma, Dr. Dummer was a Principal Scientist with Vixar Inc., a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) manufacturer in Minneapolis, MN developing sensor products for consumer, industrial, and biomedical markets. Following Vixar’s acquisition by Osram Opto-Semiconductors in 2018 (now ams-Osram) he successfully led the effort to commercialize and mass-produce the first high-efficiency multijunction VCSELs for 3D sensing and LiDAR. Dr. Dummer received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds six patents and has authored or co-authored more than 60 publications related to compound semiconductor devices and their applications.

Andrew S. Huntington, Ph.D., has 22 years of experience with the design, manufacture, and characterization of infrared detectors. He is the author of InGaAs Avalanche Photodiodes for Ranging and Lidar (Elsevier, 2020) and his patents include Detector Array Yield Recovery (US11600654) and Image Compensation for Sensor Array Having Bad Pixels (US11252359). Prior to joining Aeluma, he led detector development at Voxtel from 2004 through its acquisition by Allegro MicroSystems in 2020. Subsequently he continued in his technical leadership role in Allegro’s Photonics Business Unit through early 2024, developing a 1 by 512 APD array for an azimuthally-scanned lidar sensor that produced real-time 3D point cloud footage of 1200 by 512 format at 22 frames per second. Andrew holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Caltech and a Ph.D. in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara.