Dr. Siva is the founder of Sivananthan Laboratories, its President and Chairman of its Board of Directors. He is a pioneer in the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of and the characterization of HgCdTe, including the first MBE growth of HgCdTe on CdZnTe and the development of CdTe/Si composite substrate technology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Today, CdZnTe and CdTe/Si are the leading substrates for the MBE growth of HgCdTe. In 2005 he was honored by the U.S. Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate with a “Friend of the Night” award for his leadership in this field and his many contributions to infrared sensor technology.

His continuing contributions to the field of II-VI semiconductor research and development are evidenced by over 250 refereed publications, numerous invited talks and his perennial co-chairmanship of the “U.S. Workshop on the Physics and Chemistry of II-VI Materials”. Dr. Sivananthan also holds the positions of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics and Director of the Microphysics Laboratory (MPL) at UIC.

He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Physics from UIC and a B.S. degree in Physics from the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Grein’s research concentrates on the electronic and structural properties of narrow gap semiconductors with optoelectronic applications. He has worked extensively at computing nonradiative recombination and generation rates in superlattice-based infrared detectors and lasers and employs band structure engineering to optimize material properties. He is a Fellow of SPIE, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Dr Browning has over 30 years experience in the design and implementation of advanced imaging methods.  He has over 350 research publications, given over 300 invited talks, and had over 50 research proposals funded for the use of advanced detection methods for high resolution imaging in the transmission electron microscope. Prior to his involvement with Sivananthan Laboratories, Dr. Browning was the Lead of the $42M 7-year chemical imaging initiative at the Pacific Northwest National laboratory (PNNL) and pioneered the use of compressive sensing and inpainting for low-dose imaging.

Robert Easter, who retired from the University of Illinois in May 2015, came to the Urbana-Champaign campus as a graduate student in 1973 and joined the faculty after earning his doctorate in animal science in 1976. He served as a department head, dean, interim provost, interim chancellor and interim vice chancellor for research at UIUC and was appointed as president in 2012. He was named president emeritus at the May 2015 board meeting and is also an emeritus professor.