Austin Russell is an engineer, entrepreneur, and LiDAR industry pioneer for Autonomous Vehicles. He founded Luminar at the age of 17 while pursuing research in optical technologies and exploring applications across the medical, augmented reality, robotics and automotive industries. After a brief stint in the Stanford applied physics department, Austin accepted the Thiel Fellowship to pursue his vision of developing a new kind of sensor technology with a mission to make autonomous vehicles both safe and ubiquitous. In 2017, Austin was recognized as one of MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 and Forbes’ 30 under 30.
Tom Fennimore
Chief Financial Officer
For the past 25 years, Tom led many of the automotive industry’s most significant and successful financial endeavors that have shaped the future of the industry globally. Before joining Luminar, from 2014 to May 2020, Tom was the Global Head of Automotive and the Co-Head of the Industrials Group at Jefferies Group, LLC, and for 17 years prior, at Goldman Sachs in a variety of roles, including Global Head of Automotive and Co-Head of Goldman’s Industrials Group based in Beijing, China. Over that time, Tom managed IPOs, financings, and M&As for the likes of Tesla, Mobileye, Sensata, GM, Fiat Chrysler, BYD, Beijing Auto, Guangzhou Auto, Ballard Power, Cobasys, Key Safety Systems, Takata, Tower Automotive, Delphi, TowerSec, Visteon and many others. In 2015, Tom was recognized as one of the M&A Advisor’s “40 under 40.”
Jason Eichenholz
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer
Jason Eichenholz is a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in laser and photonics product development and commercialization. Over the past twenty-five years, he led the development of hundreds of millions of dollars of new photonics and photonic-enabled products. At Luminar he is responsible for R&D and Engineering of new products and bringing Luminar’s technology to market. Eichenholz is a fellow of SPIE and OSA and holds more than sixty patents on lasers and photonic devices. Eichenholz has a M.S. and Ph.D from CREOL at the University of Central Florida and a B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
M. Scott Faris
Chief Business Officer
Scott is an experienced serial technology company executive with over three decades of operating, venture-financing and scaling experience in optoelectronic and solid state device industries. Prior to Luminar, Scott was CEO of Panaceutics, Inc. and Planar Energy, Inc., a company developing solid state batteries for electric vehicles. Scott has been CEO of Waveguide Solutions, which pioneered integrated optical chips and COO of Ocean Optics, a global manufacturer of high-volume precision optical instrumentation. Scott serves as a Venture Partner in IDEA Fund as well as on the Board of Directors of Lightpath Technologies, Inc., a publicly traded high-volume optical component manufacturer.
