Governor Pat Quinn visits Sivananthan Laboratories, Inc. (Labs)
Governor Pat Quinn visited one of the best examples of Illinois entrepreneurship, Sivananthan Laboratories, Inc. (Labs), and its companies in Bolingbrook, IL, on Friday, September 21, 2012. The leadership of the Labs, Professor Siva Sivananthan, and Professor Chris Grein along with Raja Krishnamoorthi (President of Sivananthan Laboratories) welcomed Governor Quinn side by side with dignitaries from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) leadership, including Nancy Sullivan, Director of UIC’s Office of Technology Management; Jennifer Woodard, Associate Vice Chancellor for Civic and Corporate Relations; and Astrida Orle Tantillo, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS). Governor Quinn’s visit came after having heard about the accomplishments of Labs and the infrared (IR) industry in Illinois at the International Symposium on Optoelectronics and Material Devices (ISOMD 2012), where he delivered the keynote address in Chicago on July 12, 2012. The Labs was formed in 2009 by Siva Sivananthan, the Director of the Microphysics Laboratory (MPL) and a Professor of Physics at UIC, to act as a high-tech business incubator focused on promoting economic growth in Illinois and the United States. The UIC, the College of LAS, and the Physics Department have long supported the Labs, EPIR Technologies Inc. (the Labs’ first success story), and the MPL, where its researchers, led by Siva Sivananthan, Director of MPL since 1994, have pioneered the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of mercury cadmium telluride (HgCdTe, a.k.a MCT) since MPL’s inception in the mid-eighties. For more information, see the MPL Reporter 2012 Issue 7.