Felix Ejeckam MEN '94, PhD '97

Group4 Labs, Inc .
1600 Adams Dr., Ste. 112
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Phone: 650-688-5760 extn. 706
Fax: 650-618-8638
e-mail: felix_ejeckam@group4Labs.com
URL: www.Group4Labs.com
Felix is CEO of Silicon Valley-based Group4 Labs – a pioneer of next-generation semiconductor materials used in the wireless, solid-state lighting, electronic storage, biomedical, and other markets. Founded in 2003, the privately-held and profitable concern was boot-strapped from day one. Group4 Labs was the first in the world to develop and ship diamond-based semiconductors which enable the most powerful electronics and optical devices ever made (e.g. transistors, LEDs, lasers etc.).

Prior to Group4 Labs, Felix was CEO and co-founder of Nova Crystals, Inc. over a 5-year period. Nova developed and sold industry-leading next-generation lasers and photodetectors to makers of fiber-optic telecom, datacom, and military-related system equipment. Felix led the company through several rounds of venture financing securing $70M from top-tier sand-hill road VCs and strategic investors in the U.S. and Asia. Acquired in 2003, the company’s valuation peaked at $100 million.

Prior to Nova Crystals, Felix was an Associate with McKinsey & Company, Inc. where he advised senior executives at various Fortune-100 corporations on a wide variety of matters related to their overall strategy, operations, and governance. He was also an active contributor to the firm's knowledge building initiatives in the semiconductor industries.

Felix has held technical positions at NASA-JSC and GE, and has authored over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles in semiconductor device physics and materials science. His doctoral thesis, "...making GaAs and InP epi wafers atomically stretchable to enable monolithic integration of CMOS and Photonics components", was published by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

He holds a degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University (1992), and Masters (1994) and Doctorate degrees (1997) in electrical engineering and materials science from Cornell. At Cornell, he held fellowships from the GE and Schlumberger Foundations. Felix volunteers weekly at BUILD.org, a non-profit after-school program in Oakland, CA that has had a virtually perfect yield at shepherding kids from junior high school through graduation from university. He currently lives in San Francisco, CA with his wife Lalitha Vaidyanathan – a management consultant.