About us

Kazem Zandi has been the founder and CEO of OSCP since the company was founded. As an entrepreneur, he has led business development, strategic partnerships and funding activities while maturing the technology and putting together the core team. Prior to OSCP he worked at C2MI as a senior process engineer for 3 years and at Defence R&D Canada as a senior optoelectronics devices engineer for two years.

He holds a Ph.D. degree in Engineering Physics in the field of Micro-Photonics from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal university, where his research focus was on the development of Integrated-Optics based Inertial Sensors (Accelerometers and Gyroscopes). He also holds a Master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics in the field of Photonics.

Holding 9 patents, he has over 20 years of industrial experience in Lasers, Photonics, Optoelectronics and MEMS devices, with hands-on experience in MEMS and microsystems.

Drew Newsom is the Head of Business Development for OSCP. He has 15+ years of experience in business development, corporate development, sales, and strategy roles in the automotive, technology, and banking verticals.

Drew led product partnerships in the Smart Vehicles and Alexa AI teams at Amazon. At Toyota, Drew was responsible for pricing and strategy for vehicle infotainment and telematics products. He also established Toyota's fleet data services business in North America. At Ford Motor Company, Drew delivered partnerships in voice technologies, mapping, micro-transit, and advanced driver assistance digital services.Earlier in his career, Drew held finance and corporate development roles at BlackRock and Wells Fargo.

Drew holds a BA from Cornell University and MBA from the University of San Francisco.

Richard Williston is the Director of Operations for OSCP, with 30+ years of experience with start-ups in microsystems, compound semiconductors, MEMS and advanced materials, and has extensive manufacturing and test experience in Ring Laser Gyroscope (RLG) production.

He has held Director Level positions with Nemsor Technology (CTO), Advanced Diamond Technologies, Microbridge Technologies, BigBangwidth, Crystalline Manufacturing Ltd., as well as senior process development roles with Nortel Networks, Com Dev International, Delphax Systems and Litton Systems. He has led business development activities for Bluewater Technology Access Centre and in North America for INEX Microsystems (UK). He has held board positions with Edmonton Council for Advanced Technology, Groupe NanoXplore and Tech-Access Canada.

He holds an MSc degree in Materials Engineering from the University of Western Ontario studying RIE kinetics and a BSc in Applied Physics from the University of Waterloo in solid-state physics.

Ziad Shukri is the Director of Engineering at OSCP, bringing more than 25+ years of extensive experience in semiconductor devices development and commercialization scale up. He has brought to market multiple products from conception to high volume production.

Working for 9 years at Teledyne DALSA, Ziad was responsible for new product introduction of custom CCD image sensors for high-speed imaging for aerospace and industrial applications, with the focus on foundry process integration, yield, and reliability. While there, he also managed automotive MEMS pressure sensors and accelerometers foundry product introduction and product yield. Earlier in his career, Ziad was fab manager at Group VI Semiconductor, and manufacturing manager at Redlen Technologies and Anrad corporation (now Analogic). He also consulted for 5NPlus and Hologic.

Ziad holds a Masters and a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering (in the field of Materials and Devices) both from McGill University.

Joseph Salhany is the Program Director at OSCP with over 35 years of prior experience from start-ups to large global corporations in telecommunications, IT, medical, automotive, defense, and aerospace.

Throughout his career, he has held senior management positions in engineering, operations, product management, and program management transforming concepts into products. His latest roles focused on LiDAR system development as President of Primia Solutions, Director of Laser Operations at Luminar Technologies, Vice-President of Engineering and Product Management at Genia Photonics, and Director of Program Management at ITF Technologies.

Joseph also held various positions at Nortel Networks including Senior Manager, Program Management. He holds a B. Eng. In Electrical Engineering from Concordia University.

Brian Kronick is a senior executive with extensive expertise in strategic and operational business planning, management and finance. Brian has 25 years of experience across a broad spectrum of business environments ranging from start-ups to publically listed companies both in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors.

Brian has held CFO positions with Edgewater Wireless (TSXV:YFI), where he assisted in completing its RTO as well as concurrent equity financing and Tilcon Software where he played a key role in sale of the company to a Wind River, a U.S. publically traded corporation. Brian has also held CFO positions with Edgewater Computer Systems, Combat Sports Group, Human Resource Systems Group and inBay Technologies.

Experience in the not-for profit-sector includes CFO roles at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a foundation that helps Canadian companies develop and deploy competitive, clean technology solutions, to help solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges as well as the Institute on Governance, a charitable organization with a mandate to advance the understanding and practice of good governance in Canada and abroad with federal, provincial, municipal, aboriginal governments and not-for-profit organizations.

Brian was also part of the founding team at Spotwave Wireless Inc. - a venture-backed technology start-up dedicated to the vision of ubiquitous wireless connectivity. As CFO, Brian successfully completed over $30 million in venture capital financings from Canadian and US based Venture Capitalists, while assisting in the start-up, product and market launch and revenue growth phases.

Brian is a CPA and a CMA. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Carleton University.