Donald Golini

Lecturer in Entrepreneurship Phone: (585) 276-3500 Email: don.golini@simon.rochester.edu

Don Golini is a successful entrepreneur with over twenty years of experience in the development, management and commercialization of new technologies. As president and founder of QED Technologies, Don took a novel finishing process from a university laboratory to worldwide commercial success. Today, QED develops, manufactures, and markets precision finishing and metrology equipment for the optics industry. QED was acquired in June 2006, by Cabot Microelectronics Corporation (NASDAQ: CCMP), an Illinois based company that is the world’s leading supplier of chemical mechanical planarization slurries used in advanced semiconductor and data storage manufacturing. Golini stayed on as President until 2010.

Since its founding QED grew from 5 to more than 50 employees with personnel in the U.S., Germany, France, Japan, and Australia. The QED portfolio includes more than a dozen fundamental international patents, and the company has sold more than 150 machines in North America, Europe and Asia. Over the years, QED received various prestigious awards, including the Photonics Circle of Excellence Award, the US Department of Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement Award, the Rochester Top 100 Award, the R&D Magazine R&D100 Award, and the Rochester Business Ethics Award.

Prior to founding QED, Golini was involved in the development, management and commercialization of new technologies related to the manufacture of precision optics. He managed the research program at the Center for Optics Manufacturing (CO.) at the University of Rochester from 1992–1996, and worked on large optics manufacturing and R&D at Itek Optical Systems in Lexington, MA, from 1986–1992.

Today Don serves as Adjunct Professor at the Simon School of Business, University of Rochester, and teaches a course in Technical Entrepreneurship. He is on the Dean’s Visiting Committee for the University of Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering, is Co-Chair of the University of Rochester’s Technology Development Fund Selection Committee and a member of the University of Rochester’s Technology Development Fund Executive Committee. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Rochester Angel Network (RAN), and advises several companies in the Rochester area. He is a former president of the Rochester chapter of the Optical Society of America, is named on seven U.S. patents, and has been widely recognized for his role in transforming the state-of-the-art in precision optics manufacturing.

 

• BS, Optics
  Uiversity of Rochester
• MS, Electro-Optics
  Tufts University