Leah Kuritzky

About Leah Kuritzky

The mission to stop climate change and bring human activities back in sync with the Earth’s sustaining systems is what brings me to work each day.In my daily work, I thrive when deploying technical skills from my engineering background in semiconductors, R&D, and manufacturing with my soft skills in sensitivity, leadership, communication, and organization.I leverage these skills to contribute to creative solutions to challenging problems and to execute on those solutions. This work is always a team effort; I strongly believe that results are always bigger and better because of collaboration than would be possible with individual geniuses at work in their own corners.At Antora Energy, my work centers on transitioning our groundbreaking thermophotovoltaic heat engines from R&D into manufacturing. This utilizes my technical background in materials science, fabrication engineering, and device physics to direct the designs and processes toward manufacturing readiness, accounting for scalability, yield, reliability, and cost. This work draws on my prior industrial and academic work in R&D and manufacturing of optoelectronics for energy efficient solid-state lighting applications. My skills continue to develop rapidly as I take on new and varied roles in the dynamic start-up environment at Antora-When I was a student, I learned a saying that true vocation is the intersection of what you love to do, what you’re good at, and what the world needs. I later learned that this saying derived from a Japanese philosophy called Ikigai which relates to a life’s purpose. I return to this saying each time I need a reminder of why I am here and what path will best carry me to my own true vocation.

Experience

1. Head of Heat-to-power Operations

   Antora Energy

   May 2024 — Present · Sunnyvale, CA, US

Education

• Stanford University

  Bachelor of Science, Chemistry

• UC Santa Barbara

  PhD, Materials

  2011 — 2016

Skills

• Public Speaking
• Ion Beam Etching
• Semiconductor Fabrication
• Leds
• Materials Science
• Habitat Restoration
• Atomic Force Microscopy
• Thin Films
• Semiconductor Lasers
• Photolithography
• Hydrogen Production
• Spectroscopy
• Renewable Energy
• Chemistry
• Microfabrication
• Jmp
• Scanning Electron Microscopy
• Mathematica
• Electroluminescence
• Compound Semiconductors
• Research
• Semiconductors
• Leadership
• Technical Presentations
• Iii-V Materials
• Gan
• Invasive Species
• Mocvd
• Matlab
• Lighttools
• Optics
• Presentation Skills
• Epitaxy
• Chemical Vapor Deposition (Cvd)
• Solid State Lighting
• Technical Writing
• Electrochemical Characterization
• Optoelectronics