President, MER Corporation
CTO, NMIC Corporation
Dr. Loutfy earned his BS (1964) in applied chemical technology, MS (1966) degree in Solid State Sciences from the American University in Cairo, a Ph.D. (1971) in Electrometallurgy from University of Western Ontario, and Diploma in Business administration (1976) from McGill University.
He was a group leader in the electrochemical technology group at Noranda Research Center (1972-1976) and at Argonne National Laboratory (1977-1981). Dr. Loutfy joined Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) in late 1981 where he became Research Advisor (one of 11 in the entire company), and led the development and commercialization of advanced materials. A plant to produce specialty chemicals based on this effort was built and operated in 1985. This plant is still in operation today. Dr. Loutfy started MER Corporation in 1986 and at the same time, entered into a joint venture with an international company to develop and commercialize advanced materials including aluminum nitride substrates for the electronic industry. This venture was sold to the partner in 1988 and MER continued to develop advanced material technologies.
Dr. Loutfy has been leading MER's effort on the production and application development of fullerenes and nanotubes for the last 10 years, and as results in 1999, MER entered into a joint venture with Mitsubishi Corporation and Research Corporation Technology (RCT) forming Fullerene International Corporation (FIC) for the commercialization of Fullerenes. As a result of the overwhelming interest and the near term application potential of fullerenes and nanotubes, the President of Mitsubishi Corporation announced the creation of a $100 million fund to commercialize fullerene-based nanotechnology. This fund will be managed by the joint venture of which Dr. Loutfy is a board member.
Dr. Loutfy co-authored a book on fullerenes, and a book on carbon nanotubes and their applications, contributed a chapter to the encyclopedia of technology on fullerene hydride, contributed 12 chapters to the Proceedings of International Fullerenes Workshop 2001 Tokyo, Kluwer Academic Publishers, and published over 100-reviewed article. He has been quoted in New York Times (April 19, 2000 issue), NASA Tech Brief June 2000, Fortune Magazine (June 2001 issue), RedHerring July 18 2001, Smalltimes Nov 8 2001, Chemical week Dec 12 2001, and Smalltimes July 2002 for his vision for scale up and applications development of fullerenes and nanotubes. Dr. Loutfy has been invited speaker promoting nanocarbon Technology in ASM Material Solution 2001, Nanotechplanet Boston November 2001, Nagano ISNC November 2001, IBF Nanotechnology Investing Forum -- Palm Springs February 2002, Kyoto Industry Meets on Nano-Technology March 2002, Nanotechplanet, San Jose May 2002, and Nanotechplanet Asia, Singapore June 2002.
Dr. Loutfy has received four R&D 100 Awards; in addition, he has won the prestigious National Tibbetts award in 1998 and 2001 for outstanding contribution to the commercialization of technologies from the SBIR programs.
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