SmallTech
Consulting Advisory and Extended Team
Our advisory and extended team provide additional expertise in our core areas, as well as in medicine, finite element analysis (FEA), display technologies, electronics, regulatory affairs, energy and intellectual property.
 Neha Choksi, MSEE |
MEMS, Nanotechnology, High-Volume Manufacturing, Management |
| Nasreen Chopra, Ph.D |
Nanotechnology, Management, Alternative Energy |
| Benjamin Chui, Ph.D. |
MEMS, Nanotechnology, Prototyping, AFMs, Piezoresistors, Wafer Processing |
| Mike Daneman, Ph.D. |
MEMS, Optics, Packaging, Alternative Energy |
| Janelle Gunther, Ph.D. |
Materials, Polymers, Nanotechnology |
| Liz Lison, BS Medical Science |
FDA Regulatory Affairs |
| Lauren Palmateer, Ph.D. |
Display Technologies, Packaging, IP, Healthcare, Product Development |
| Minnie Sarwal, MD, MRCP, DCH, Ph.D. |
Medicine, Genetics |
| Byron Shaw, Ph.D |
Sensors, Energy, Automotive, Management |
| Dolf van der Heide, Ph.D |
Finite Element Analysis, COMSOL, ANSYS, Biomechanics, Applied Mechanics |
Neha Choksi, MSEE
Ms. Neha Choksi earned an MS in Electrical Engineering with a MEMS specialization from Stanford University and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from Vanderbilt University. Ms. Choksi is a Founding Member of SmallTech Consulting, and has a wide-ranging technical and business experience that includes jobs as the Director of Product Engineering at Silicon Microstructures, Inc., as an Engineering Manager and a Director of Business Development for startups and premier firms, and as a Strategic Management Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company. Neha has experience with commercialization, new product introduction (NPI), design controls, advanced product quality planning (APQP), ISO9001/TS16949 requirements and implementation, key performance indicators (KPI), and vendor audits. She has also taught a course on Nanofabrication at Foothill College and is active in multiple IEEE chapters including serving as treasurer of the San Francisco Bay Area Nanotechnology Council and past treasurer of IEEE Women in Engineering. She has published technically, and enjoys working to balance market/business and technical perspectives.
Nasreen Chopra, Ph.D
Dr. Nasreen Chopra is an entrepreneur with ten years of experience in discovering, developing and transferring new materials technology into application. Dr. Chopra was co-founder and CEO of Koila, Inc, a venture backed start-up company addressing cooling of microelectronics, where she generated core IP in thermal application of nanotubes, raised Series A funding from top tier venture capitalists, and built a multi-disciplinary team of engineers establishing world's leading expertise of nanotube growth on copper. Nasreen's experience also includes work at Agilent Laboratories on nanopore synthesis (10 - 100 nm diameter) and fast x-ray imaging systems to inspect printed circuit boards. At Applied Materials, she was core member of the team that developed Black Diamond, a leading low-k dielectric film currently in manufacture. Dr. Chopra earned Ph.D., M.A. and B.S. degrees in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an inventor on numerous pending patents, and has authored 20 technical publications.
Benjamin Chui, Ph.D.
Dr. Benjamin Chui has broad experience in MEMS and Nanotechnology including MEMS-related background research, design, layout, and fabrication, with a focus on device prototyping and process development. Ben graduated from Stanford University in 1998 with a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering under Prof. Tom Kenny. He has subsequently worked in various settings including a optical MEMS startup company, IBM Almaden Research Center, and the Institute of Microtechnology in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He has strong expertise in developing AFM cantilevers and has extensive processing experience at the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility, prototyping a wide range of microdevices for electrical, optical, fluidic, medical and atomic-level sensing applications. Dr. Chui has published one book and numerous papers on MEMS-related subjects. He has been a MEMS consultant since 2005, specializing in design, layout and prototyping.
Mike Daneman, Ph.D.
Dr. Mike Daneman brings a broad range of experience, including over 13 years experience in MEMS design and development, optical design, and fiber-optic packaging, as well as experience in small and large group and project management. Mike has published a number of technical journal and conference papers in the field of optical MEMS. Mike received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, then went on to receive an M.S. and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in adaptive Optical MEMS and Fiber-optics components. Mike has worked at Silicon Light Machines, co-founded Onix Microsystems, and most recently, has managed chip-assembly and packaging of MEMS-based miniature Solid-Oxide Fuel Cells at Lilliputian Systems.
Janelle Gunther, Ph.D.
Dr. Janelle Gunther is a materials scientist (B.S. in Materials Science, Ph.D. in Materials Science/Polymer Physics, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) with expertise in self-assembling nanomaterials and materials characterization. Dr. Gunther has worked with many classes of materials including polymers, self-assembling nanostructures, biomaterials, semiconductors and nuclear materials. Janelle particularly enjoys working with companies in designing characterization or quality control programs to improve their product yield, and in bringing concepts from the design to prototype and production stages. She specializes in the complex nature of creating products that combine multiple types of materials in the same device, from early research and development stages all the way through to commercial production, including cost/benefit analyses for characterization and equipment purchase budgeting. At MIT, Dr. Gunther worked on liquid crystals and block copolymers as well as total joint prostheses. As a postdoctoral associate at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, she transitioned to nanomaterials and surface science analyses through her work on atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) applied to self-assembling nanostructures. At Agilent Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory some of her projects included failure analysis of DNA and protein array products, target characterization and development for the National Ignition Facility (NIF), and multiple projects involving semiconductor devices and microfluidics. She has expertise in AFM, XPS, STM, DSC, TGA and Auger. In addition, she has close collaborators for projects requiring SIMS and Nuclear Microprobe analysis. Janelle has over 20 publications and presentations in refereed journals and scientific conferences and several patents in biotechnology, and has served as a journal article reviewer in polymer science. Dr. Gunther is a faculty member teaching Chemistry and Biochemistry at San Francisco State.
Liz Lison, BS Medical Science
Ms. Liz Lison has more than 20 years experience in the diagnostics industry, having held various senior management positions in regulatory affairs, quality assurance, operations management, customer service and sales and marketing. She has experience working with companies governed by FDA, ISO, CLIA and HIPAA regulations. Most recently she has worked with a number of entrepreneurial diagnostic companies to define their regulatory strategy and implement operational infrastructure to bring cutting-edge products from concept to commercialization. This has included implementing design control systems and facilitating meetings with the FDA. Ms. Lison also has experience of the regulation of healthcare products in the EU and has worked with several companies to achieve compliance with the In Vitro Diagnostics Directive and ISO 13485 certification. Ms. Lison has a BS in Medical Science from the University of Bradford (UK). She is a member of the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.
Lauren Palmateer, Ph.D.
Dr. Lauren Palmateer's areas of expertise include Flat Panel Displays as in the LCDs displays and ereaders, touchscreens, display electronic packaging, biophysics and strategic patent analysis. She received her PhD from Cornell University School of Electrical Engineering in 1989 in III-V Semiconductor electronics. Lauren worked at Bell Labs, IBM, Qualcomm and 4 Silicon Valley Start up companies. She was a part of the original team at IBM research developing the first color laptop display, the Thinkpad. She holds 22 issues patents, pending applications and numerous publications in the technical journals. She specializes in manufacturing aspects, equipment and process design, materials, packaging and interconnects in display technologies and biophysics engineering applied to healthcare and product development.
Minnie Sarwal, MD, MRCP, DCH, Ph.D.
Dr. Minnie Sarwal is a pediatric transplant physician and research scientist, trained in the UK with a DCH from London University and an MRCP from the Royal College of Physicians. London. She also holds a degree in Molecular Biology from Christ's College, Cambridge University, from the Molecular Genetics Unit Laboratory of Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner. She is the recipient of Medical Research Council and National Kidney Foundation grants in the UK and NIH and Industry grants in the US for her efforts in translation research in transplantation, and has spearheaded the first steroid-free kidney transplant immunosuppression approach for children. She is an Associate Professor at Stanford, where she is involved in patient care and running a laboratory focusing on DNA microarray technology, genomics and proteomics research. She has authored 6 book chapters and over 50 publications and holds 2 patents. She has chaired numerous transplant symposia and transplant committees, is an Ad Hoc member of 4 NIH Study Sections, and has given over 100 lectures nationally and internationally.
Byron Shaw, Ph.D.
Dr. Byron Shaw received his B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT, as well as a B.S. in German language and literature. He earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering/controls from UC Berkeley. He worked at BMW managing advanced technology, for which he coordinated all university research in the US and was the technical manager of a 30-person engineering and marketing team and a $4 million budget.
Dolf van der Heide, Ph.D.
Dr. Dolf van der Heide has a broad experience in computational modeling of fundamental multiphysics problems that span traditional MEMS design of inertial sensors and magnetometers for e-compass applications, biological tissue modeling, medical device development, electronics packaging. Recently, Dolf focuses on the design of energy systems such as lithium-ion battery packs to drive electro-motors and thermal batteries for climate control of electrical vehicles. Dolf has a strong software development background in generation of commercial-grade non linear finite element analysis programs including MARC Analysis Research Corporation, ANSYS and COMSOL. He holds several patents, in the fields of inertial sensors, e-compass and human energy harvesting. Dolf received a Ph.D. from Stanford in the computational mechanics division and earned a M.S. degree in applied mechanics from the University of Technology, Eindhoven in the Netherlands.