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Josué J. López, PhD

Senior Associate

About

Josué J. López is a Senior Associate at Fine Structure Ventures where he leads investments in climate tech, advanced materials, and next generation computing. Josué has nearly fifteen years of experience leading research and development in the areas of nanomaterials, photonics, and lidar, has co-authored 12 publications, and has been cited over 1700 times.

Prior to joining FSV, Josué was the CEO of Kyber Photonics, a startup focused on developing a lidar-on-a-chip sensor for autonomous vehicles and machines. The commercialization effort (sponsored by the Activate Fellowship and DARPA) was featured in IEEE Spectrum and was aimed at meeting the cost, performance, and reliability requirements of autonomy customers.

Josué earned a B.S. in Physics from Rice University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. He completed his thesis under MacArthur Genius, Marin Soljačić (MIT Professor of Physics).

  • Steel has been made essentially the same way for thousands of years, by using carbon as a chemical reductant. Today, that process is responsible for about 8% of global CO2 emissions. Boston Metal has developed a game-changing electrolysis process for making steel. In their Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE) cell, an inert metallic anode is immersed in an electrolyte containing iron ore. The result is a clean, high purity liquid metal that can be sent directly to ladle metallurgy — no reheating required.

    Learn more at bostonmetal.com.

  • Perovskites are a relatively new class of semiconductors that have emerged over the past two decades as a means to generate more electrons from incident sunlight at a lower cost compared to traditional PV modules.  Caelux has developed a proprietary formulation of the material and a manufacturing process that allows deployment in tandem with any other solar panel made of silicon.

  • mmWave is critical to the future of all wireless technology, but the realization of its potential faces severe roadblocks. Weak uplink, high deployment costs, low 5G radio efficiency and soaring operating costs are all combining to thwart the promise of mmWave. Currently, 5G networks are being held back from realizing their true potential due to a critical missing component: high-performance mmWave power amplifier technology. High-performance GaN-on-Silicon (GaN-on-Si) brings a new option to the table that could make 5G millimeter wave more practical. Finwave’s award-winning 3DGaN technology improves linearity, output power and efficiency in 5G mmWave systems – while reducing costs for carriers.

    Learn more at finwavesemi.com.

  • Mantle helps manufacturers bring new products to life faster, cheaper, and more easily with its patented TrueShape metal 3D printing technology. TrueShape delivers precision parts that dramatically cut the time and cost of making production-grade tools, molds, and dies. Mantle tools have been used to produce over one million end-use parts for customers – a number that grows each day.

    Learn more at mantle3d.com.