Leading the Silver Nanowire Technology

Cliff Morris

Founding Chief Executive Officer, Board Member

Cliff Morris is a successful CEO with a track record of leading, growing and positioning early-stage technology companies for success. Offering an extensive background in electronic materials technologies, Cliff has served as the founding CEO of privately held C3Nano since 2010, accelerating the growth of this venture capital-backed startup company specializing in the development of solution-based transparent conductive inks and films for consumer electronics manufacturers to replace indium tin oxide (ITO). Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the company manufactures in California and Changzhou, China.

Cliff’s executive leadership experience includes raising $41 million and spearheading multimillion-dollar joint development agreements and lucrative strategic partnerships with leading industry players. In his current CEO role, Cliff established the company’s operating strategy and business structure and has grown the company to 40+ employees while strategically building the supply chain, channel partners and customer base.

In addition to his M&A, deal-making and business development expertise, Cliff brings international experience gained from his five-year tenure as Director of European Operations in Paris, France, where he capitalized on new business opportunities, led business expansion, and solidified relationships with key European Fortune 500 clients for Sheldahl, a wholly owned subsidiary of Flextronics, Inc. Previously, Cliff held the role of Vice President, Business Development at NanoGram Corporation in Milpitas, CA, where he helped orchestrate the company’s acquisition by Teijin Chemicals in 2010.

In addition to sitting on the board at C3Nano, Cliff is a board of director at FLEx Lighting, a display film company.

Cliff earned his B.A. from Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI and has an MBA from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH.

Ajay Virkar, PhD

Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer

Ajay oversees C3Nano’s research and new technology development, production, intellectual property, and manages several commercial and technical partnerships. He has helped C3Nano raise more than $50 Million dollars in strategic and venture capital.

Ajay has more than ninety patents (issued or pending), and has co-authored eleven technical publications in peer-reviewed journals.

He completed his BS in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (with honors) at the University of Illinois (UIUC) and his PhD in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University where he received the Melvin P. Klein Award (from SLAC), and the Springer Prize, which recognized and published his doctoral thesis as amongst the top dissertations globally. In 2010, Ajay helped C3Nano win the MIT Clean Energy Grand Prize and the NASA Game Changer Technology Award. He was an inaugural recipient of the University of Illinois Young Alumni Award (department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2019). Ajay is also an associate producer for the documentary film Infinite Potential about the life and times of physicist and philosopher David Bohm.

Tim Kingsbury

Chief Financial Officer

Tim comes with a wealth of knowledge in the high-performance coatings industry. For the past 25 years, he has led finance teams, HR, IT and legal operations at several privately held companies in polymers, advanced materials and cleantech. He is experienced growing, financing and exiting both privately held and publicly traded companies through, new product development, strategic acquisitions and restructuring.

At Matrix Materials, he led coatings and advanced materials manufacturing functions from development to finished customer products, managing several teams across accounting, management reporting, regulatory requirements, and logistics. For M2 Renewables, Tim drove growth, investment strategy, and capital raises, running teams in accounting, audit, legal, investor relations, contract management, outsourced manufacturing and financial budgeting.

Tim has led and supported negotiations through closing for several privately held company acquisitions by large strategic buyers. He also served as chief financial officer for a publicly traded international consulting firm.

Tim is a CPA; and he has taught college level accounting courses as an adjunct instructor. Tim graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in Business Administration/Accounting, and he earned his MBA in Finance from the Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Xiqiang Yang, PhD

Vice President of Research & Development

Dr. Xiqiang Yang received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Chicago. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he joined Eastman Kodak Company as a research scientist in the Kodak Research Laboratories. In 2012, he came to C3Nano as Senior Scientist and was appointed Director of R&D at C3Nano in 2014. Xiqiang has over 23 years of experience in industrial research in chemistry and materials and is co-inventor on over forty US patents.

Peter Li, PhD

Vice President of Product Development

Dr. Peter (Ying-Syi) Li received his PhD in 1995, and finished his postdoctoral training in 2000 from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. He has more than twenty years in organic/dye synthesis and more than five years in nanomaterial synthesis experiences, including quantum dots, iron oxide, silver and gold nanoparticles, and metal nanowires.  He holds thirteen US patents and has published eleven research articles for ‘Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology,’ ‘Journal of Physical Chemistry,’ and the Society for Information Display, 2004 International Symposium. Peter is responsible for new ink formulation and nanomaterial synthesis.

Xiaofeng Chen, PhD

Vice President of Business Operations

Dr. Xiaofeng Chen received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY in 2007 and his BS/MS in Chemical Engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. He has more than fifteen years of experience in research and development, manufacturing design, process development, technical marketing, business development, and downstream applications. He has published eight research articles and holds three US patents. Currently Dr. Chen is responsible for technical marketing, business development, and downstream applications at C3Nano.

Scott Ferguson

VP of Operations

Scott has over 30 years of manufacturing development and scale-up to commercialization experience in manufacturing development and flexible/printed electronics. He has worked at both Fortune 500 and start-up companies at the VP and C levels for engineering and operations and has developed technologies and businesses with demonstrated commercial success in the areas of RFID, smart packaging, displays, batteries, touchscreen, and other printed/flexible electronics.

He holds a Master’s degree in Business Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Connecticut.

Cliff Morris

Founding Chief Executive Officer, Board Member

Cliff Morris is a successful CEO with a track record of leading, growing and positioning early-stage technology companies for success. Offering an extensive background in electronic materials technologies, Cliff has served as the founding CEO of privately held C3Nano since 2010, accelerating the growth of this venture capital-backed startup company specializing in the development of solution-based transparent conductive inks and films for consumer electronics manufacturers to replace indium tin oxide (ITO). Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the company manufactures in California and Changzhou, China.

Cliff’s executive leadership experience includes raising $41 million and spearheading multimillion-dollar joint development agreements and lucrative strategic partnerships with leading industry players. In his current CEO role, Cliff established the company’s operating strategy and business structure and has grown the company to 40+ employees while strategically building the supply chain, channel partners and customer base.

In addition to his M&A, deal-making and business development expertise, Cliff brings international experience gained from his five-year tenure as Director of European Operations in Paris, France, where he capitalized on new business opportunities, led business expansion, and solidified relationships with key European Fortune 500 clients for Sheldahl, a wholly owned subsidiary of Flextronics, Inc. Previously, Cliff held the role of Vice President, Business Development at NanoGram Corporation in Milpitas, CA, where he helped orchestrate the company’s acquisition by Teijin Chemicals in 2010.

In addition to sitting on the board at C3Nano, Cliff is a board of director at FLEx Lighting, a display film company.

Cliff earned his B.A. from Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI and has an MBA from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH.

Ajay Virkar, PhD

Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer

Ajay oversees C3Nano’s research and new technology development, production, intellectual property, and manages several commercial and technical partnerships. He has helped C3Nano raise more than $50 Million dollars in strategic and venture capital.

Ajay has more than ninety patents (issued or pending), and has co-authored eleven technical publications in peer-reviewed journals.

He completed his BS in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (with honors) at the University of Illinois (UIUC) and his PhD in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University where he received the Melvin P. Klein Award (from SLAC), and the Springer Prize, which recognized and published his doctoral thesis as amongst the top dissertations globally. In 2010, Ajay helped C3Nano win the MIT Clean Energy Grand Prize and the NASA Game Changer Technology Award. He was an inaugural recipient of the University of Illinois Young Alumni Award (department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2019). Ajay is also an associate producer for the documentary film Infinite Potential about the life and times of physicist and philosopher David Bohm.

Scott Soong

Board Member

Scott is currently the chairman of Pervasive Displays, a BOE Group affiliate and VusionGroup company. He has 11 years of experience in software and 16 years of experience in hardware components and applications. He was an executive at SES-Imagotag, a Paris-based Euronext listed company, and previously led four business units at Chi Lin Technology, part of the Taiwan-based CHIMEI Corporation. During his career, Scott has built and led multinational teams in US-, European-, and Asian-

based organizations. He was a founding partner of nine global startups, including Pervasive Displays. As an entrepreneur, he has more than 20 years of experience in organically nurturing and scaling concepts into profitable, operational businesses. He also has initiated and completed multi-hundred-million-dollar cross-border merger and

acquisition (M&A) transactions. Scott enjoys working with founders and executives of early-stage companies as an advisor and board member. His experience spans industrial- and consumer-based display components and solutions, software, and collaboration-focused service platforms in the retail, Internet of Things (IoT), signage, lighting, and automotive sectors.

Scott has an MBA from the Hass School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a BA from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Zhenan Bao

Professor of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University

Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She has over 350 refereed publications and over 50 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index of 108.

Bao is a Fellow of ACS, AAAS, MRS, SPIE, ACS PMSE and ACS POLY.  She served as a Board Member for the National Academy Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology and Board of Directors for the Materials Research Society (MRS). She is an Associate Editor for Chemical Sciences. She was the recipient of the AICHE Andreas Acroivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering 2014, ACS Polymer Division Carl S. Marvel Creative Polymer Chemistry Award 2013, ACS Author Cope Scholar Award 2011, Royal Society of Chemistry Beilby Medal and Prize 2009, IUPAC Creativity in Applied Polymer Science Prize 2008, American Chemical Society Team Innovation Award 2001, R&D 100 Award 2001.  She was selected by MIT Technology Review magazine in 2003 as one of the top 100 young innovators. She is among the world’s top 100 materials scientists by Thomson Reuters.