About Us

Sivananthan Laboratories is a high tech business incubator focused on promoting economic growth in Illinois and the United States through fostering cutting-edge, fundamental research and development. Sivananthan Laboratories’ corporate model is the famous Bell Laboratories, whose many fundamental research contributions helped drive our nation’s leadership in technology and manufacturing. Indeed, the demise of major industrial laboratories such as Bell Labs and others has left a large gap in domestic technology development and threatens future economic growth. We are trying to bridge this gap by creating and assisting small businesses in nurturing their ability to research new technologies, create jobs, and generate innovative products and services. We at Sivananthan Laboratories cherish an ecosystem of scientific collaboration among academia, industry, and government while working with external partners to commercialize successful research. We will leverage these collaborations in order to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

Our Founder

Dr. Siva Sivananthan

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. Christoph Grein

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. Bob Easter

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.

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