Webinar: “Insights into Product Development at Companies with Different Funding Models”

The IEEE Photonics Young Professionals Advisory Committee and IEEE Photonics Industry Engagement Committee are committed to assisting early career members in evaluating their career goals, honing their skills, and expanding their professional networks. This support extends to transforming ideas into successful businesses and industrial ventures. Through this joint webinar series, tech startup visionaries and mentors offer valuable professional development guidance on entrepreneurship, business development, and navigating the photonics industry.

This talk will describe some personal insights working in photonics product development at several companies with differing funding models. Two particular examples will be described, one venture-backed and the other self-funded. The impact of the type of funding model on the operation of the company and how the product development process evolves will be explored and compared.

Speaker Bio: Dalma Novak, Ph.D. is VP of Engineering at Octane Wireless where she develops high-performance RF-over-fiber technologies for commercial and defense wireless applications. Novak has extensive technical leadership and project management experience in both the industrial and academic sectors. Prior to co-founding Pharad in 2004, she spent 12 years as a Professor and Chair of Telecommunications in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Melbourne, Australia. From 2001 – 2003, she was a Technical Section Lead at the venture-backed Dorsál Networks, Inc. and later at Corvis Corporation where she led cross-disciplinary R&D teams developing hardware for long-haul transmission systems. In 2007, Novak was elected to the grade of IEEE Fellow for her contributions to enabling technologies for the implementation of fiber-radio systems and, in 2018, she received the IEEE Photonics Society Engineering Achievement Award. Novak is the 2025 IEEE Technical Activities Vice President and was President of the IEEE Photonics Society in 2014 – 2015.