|
Dr. Steffen Koehler is a strategic marketing and business development specialist with a background in telecommunications and photonics. He has worked at many levels of the industry supply chain, from telecommunications carriers to systems suppliers to components manufacturers. In the past 12 years, he has worked with both large, established companies and technology startups.
He began his career with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and then M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrophysics from the University of Southern California. During his Ph.D. studies, and afterwards as a Visiting Scientist, he worked at the Hughes Research Laboratories. Dr. Koehler finished his academic studies with a post-doctoral research position at Princeton University.
Dr. Koehler then joined Technology Resources, Inc., the advanced technology subsidiary of SBC, where he evaluated and introduced the first generation of DWDM and 10 Gb/s transport equipment to the telephone company. Dr. Koehler then went to Ciena, where he was the Principal Systems Engineer responsible for developing the company’s first ring-based DWDM system. After developing the first release of the system, Dr. Koehler joined Ciena’s product management organization as Director of Product Management for metro products.
He then served as vice president of marketing for a series of technology startup companies, all of which were successfully acquired. These companies included Kymata (sold to Alcatel Optronics), Sparkolor (sold to intel), Ignis Optics (sold to Bookham), and Phasebridge (sold to Emcore). At each of these companies, Dr. Koehler was responsible for setting strategic product roadmaps, overseeing tactical marketing and customer relationships, positioning the company for exit, and assisting with M&A activities. | 