Nalin Kumar

Dr. Nalin Kumar, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Sortera Alloys, is a celebrated inventor with 75 US patents and a serial entrepreneur with multiple high technology start-ups over the last 30 years. Dr. Kumar obtained his M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. in microelectronics from Drexel University in 1985 and 1988 respectively. His areas of expertise include advanced materials, devices, equipment and their manufacturing, in particular, metal sorting systems, vacuum systems, x-ray tubes and instrumentation, and wide band gap semiconductors including diamond cold cathodes. Dr. Kumar has published more than 30 technical papers, has 66 US patents and another 10 patents pending in various aspects of electronics. Prior to joining Sortera, he led the ARPA-E funded aluminum recycling project at UHV as the principal investigator, and was instrumental in the development of the highly successful XRF/AI based metal recycling technology. In 1994, he co-founded UHV Technologies (aka nanoRANCH) and has led it as its President for the last 25 years. Previously, he worked on the development of diamond cold cathodes for flat panel displays. Dr. Kumar’s work on diamond field emitters, started in 1989 at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), Austin, Texas, led to the first and some of the most fundamental patents in this field. He led a large team for diamond cold cathode field emission display research and development effort. In particular, his inventions in the field of nano-crystalline diamond field emission cathodes led to launching of a publicly traded spin-off company called SI Technology, Inc. He was also the PI for the $7.3 million diamond cold cathode-based display development project funded by ATP of the Department of Commerce, and the $1.0 million diamond material development program funded by DARPA.