Lucidant Team

Matt brings over 20 years of combined academic and industry experience to Lucidant Polymers. At Caliper Technologies, he developed microfluidic applications for drug discovery and biomolecular separations involving polymeric gels and custom electrophoretic systems. He developed controlled release drug delivery technologies with biodegradable polymers as complex emulsions and depo gels at Point Biomedical. He completed a Post Doc at Stanford in Bioengineering, a Ph.D. from Brown University in Biomedical Engineering, a BS in Chemical Engineering and is licensed in California as a Professional Engineer (PE). He has authored 14 papers and 3 patents in the fields of microfluidics, drug discovery and biomolecular analysis.

Alex is a member of Lucidant's production team where he works as a chemist in the development of Lucidant products. He graduated from San Jose State University in 2021 in chemical engineering and is currently pursuing a masters at SJSU. His research at SJSU focuses on synthesizing polymers and developing polymer coatings for electrochemical applications. Outside of work and school Alex enjoys exercising and playing basketball. 

John is the go-to-contact for all Lucidant customers. Formerly with Genelabs and Applied Biosystems, John has over 35 years of experience as a research scientist and senior manager for small and mid-sized life sciences companies. John has numerous publications in the fields of nucleic acid diagnostics and novel PCR applications, together with 8 issued US Patents in the fields of virology, DNA diagnostics, and nucleic acid sample preparation.

Dr. Chiari leads the Chemistry and Technology for Bioscience group at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Technologies of CNR, and is a co-founder of Lucidant Polymers. Her team develops micro-analytical techniques for genomics and proteomics. Her expertise includes 1) automated systems for gene and protein expression, 2) mini microchip electrophoresis systems, 3) microarray technology. Dr. Chiari is recognized internationally for knowledge of polymeric coatings for electrophoresis and microarrays using different materials: glass, silicon oxide, polydimethylsiloxane, polyethylene, and gold. The team, comprising organic, bioorganic and computational chemists, biochemists and biotechnologists, research microarray technology, surface modifications, polymer coatings, to develop clinically relevant bioassays. Dr. Chiari has authored of more than 250 publications in internationally peer-reviewed journals and coordinated numerous national and international projects. 

Alessandro is a member of the research team at CNR in Milan, and collaborates with Lucidant doing R&D studies. After obtaining his Master’s at “Università degli Studi di Milano” in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies (2019), he started his career as a Fellow Researcher at SCITEC-CNR, under Dr. Marcella Chiari. He specializes in polymer & surface chemistry. He also specializes in hydrogels fabrication to develop new bioanalytical methods using microarrays. In 2021 he started his Ph.D. at “Università degli Studi di Milano” in Pharmaceutical Sciences in partnership with Dr. Chiari’s group at CNR.

As a Quality Director, Visha brings over 30 years of industry experience to Lucidant Polymers. Over her career, she has developed and managed effective and efficient Quality Management Systems, domestically and globally. She has managed compliance groups for FDA and EU regulations and various ISO standards, for medical device, in-vitro diagnostic (IVD), biotech, and the pharmaceutical industries.

Annelise is an expert in characterizing the physical properties of novel polymers and gels, which correlate with performance for a given application. With a PhD in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley, she specializes in polymer science of novel materials and hydrogel engineering for biological applications. Dr. Barron started work in the field of capillary electrophoresis research in 1990 and continues to develop innovative materials and strategies to enhance bioanalytical separations on microfluidic devices. She is also the W.M. Keck associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.

At the confluence of Biochemistry and Engineering, Caleb leads for People, Process, and Product to advance medical research. His extensive training in cancer cell biology, organic synthesis, metabolomics and analytical chemistry informs his specialty at Lucidant: delivering quality, custom, organic polymers at scale. He attended De Anza and Foothill College before University of California, Davis (2018). If not in the lab, he is certainly riding his bicycle.