The Team
Founding Partner
Laura Smoliar
Laura Smoliar became a Founding Partner of the Berkeley Catalyst Fund because it combines her passion for mentoring technical entrepreneurs with her interest in philanthropy. Laura founded a start-up in 2005 called Mobius Photonics (acquired by NASDAQ:IPGP), where she served as Chairman and CEO, and where she raised several rounds of funding from investors in the USA and Japan. She has worked in diverse hardware industries including data storage, displays, lasers, and biotech instrumentation. In 2017 Laura was elected a Senior Member of the SPIE and was awarded the Judith Pool award by the Association for Women in Sciences for her mentoring work. Laura earned her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry with Yuan T. Lee. She also holds an A.B. Summa Cum Laude in Chemistry from Columbia College, Columbia University.
Founding Partner
ted hou
Ted started his career in the fiber optic communications industry. For over ten years he managed product marketing and product development and later served as the general manager of the passive component business unit for JDS Uniphase. In 2010, Ted joined the solar energy industry and served as VP of Marketing at Hanwha SolarOne and VP of Product Strategy at NRG Residential Solar. During this time, he gained experience in solar panel manufacturing, solar farm project financing, and residential solar financing. Ted grew up in China, is fluent in Mandarin, and received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1989. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1995, under the guidance of Nobel laureate Professor Yuan T. Lee. He was engaged for four years at the IBM Almaden Research Center as a postdoctoral research fellow.
Founding Partner
Drew Lanza
Drew grew up in the Silicon Valley where his father was the early CTO of a tiny chemistry-focused startup that grew into a large, successful public company. He has entrepreneurship in his blood. He started and helped to run five companies before joining Morgenthaler Ventures. He has a solid track record of using his deep, operating experience and taking companies from two or three founders and growing them into large, multinational corporations. Drew received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from Stanford and also served on the faculty. He went on to receive an MBA from Harvard.
