2 February 2011

Nanowire LED firm Glo appoints Philips Lighting veteran as chairman

Glo AB of Ideon Science Park, Lund, Sweden has appointed Dr K. R. (Kaj) den Daas as its new independent, non-executive chairman of the board.

Glo was spun off from Lund University’s Nanometer Structure Consortium (nmC) in September 2005 to commercialize LEDs using the proprietary heterostructured semiconductor nanowire technology research of the team of Solid State Physics professor & nmC head Lars Samuelson (glo’s chief scientific officer). Specifically, glo develops nanowire-based LEDs (nLEDs) emitting at brightness levels suitable for general illumination applications and with performance equal to or better than existing state-of-the-art planar chips, yet at much lower manufacturing cost at the die level, it is claimed, by using readily available, low-cost and large-area silicon substrates with mass-production-friendly technologies.

Glo controls a portfolio of patents and patent applications covering innovations in nanowire epitaxial growth and process technologies made by the Lund team and by glo itself. The firm says that it maintains a close working relationship with nmC and has access under contract to relevant labs and intellectual property developed there, as well as its own labs and facilities in Sweden, Denmark and Silicon Valley.

Glo announced last September that it had opened an engineering center in Silicon Valley, recruited Fariba Danesh as CEO, and raised SEK170m ($25m) in a financing round led by new investor Wellington Partners of London & Munich, joined by existing investors Provider Venture Partners of Stockholm, Hafslund Venture, Agder Energi Venture, Teknoinvest of Oslo, and VantagePoint Venture Partners of San Bruno, CA, together with LU Innovation and LUAB (the investment arm of Sweden’s Lund University) as major owners, plus Glo’s founders and employees.

den Daas, as chairman of Philips Lighting of North America and executive VP of Philips Lighting BV until his retirement from Philips at the end of 2009, led Philips in building the largest lighting company in North America through both organic growth and acquisitions (such as Lumileds and Color Kinetics), with an emphasis on the emerging solid-state (LED) lighting market.

Prior executive assignments in Philips Lighting included periods as chief operating officer of BG Lamps (the largest and most profitable business of Philips Lighting), CEO Business Unit Lamps EMEA (including Lighting Components), CEO Business Unit Lamps Asia Pacific, senior VP & general manager Business Unit Luminaires Asia Pacific, and VP & general manager Philips Lighting Canada.

den Daas holds a doctorate degree in Business Economics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and is a member of the Illumination Engineering Society of North America and a former governor of NEMA (the National Electrical Manufacturers Association). He also serves on the boards of Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed NVC Lighting and NYSE-listed Valmont Industries.

“He brings over 30 years of highly relevant commercial experience in the general lighting industry worldwide to Glo that will be very valuable to the company as it transitions from an R&D phase to its mass production and commercial phases,” says Glo’s retiring executive chairman G. Russell Mortenson. “Kaj is a hugely accomplished and experienced executive in the general lighting industry, not only in North America but in Asia and in Europe as well,” comments Danesh.

“Glo’s unique nanotechnology approach to LEDs has enormous potential to be a catalyst to help bring energy-saving and environmentally friendly solid-state lighting to the mass market at affordable prices,” believes den Daas.

Tags: Glo LEDs

Visit: www.glo.se