Leadership

Management Team

• Conrad Lewis, Founder
  

  Mr. Lewis is a Founder and Principal of Eagle One Ventures, a seed VC firm. A telecom industry veteran, he has over 25 years senior management and operating experience with Newbridge, Mitel and Newbury Ventures, a US $250M VC firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Paris and Ottawa.

  As Executive Vice President, Mr. Lewis helped grow Newbridge from a pre-revenue private company to the global public company that was acquired by Alcatel for $7 billion. During his 14 years at Newbridge he played a significant role in the creation and growth of over 28 Affiliate companies, as well as running three key product lines.

  Prior to Newbridge, Mr. Lewis was Executive Vice President of Research and Development of Mitel Corporation, where he led the development of their original PBX product.

  In 2006, Conrad founded a new company, eSight Corporation to develop a new generation of intelligent glasses to correct and enhance vision.

  Conrad holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering at Queen's University and has completed a variety of post-graduate courses in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa.



• Dan Mathers, Chairman
  

  Mr. Mathers has over 22 years of experience in business development in high-growth technology companies, creating over $1B in shareholder value.
   
  Dan sits on the Boards of the Ottawa Technology Transfer Network (OTTN) and the Acheson Lewis Vision Improvement Foundation.
   
  Prior to eSight, Mr. Mathers was President and CEO of IceFyre Inc., a venture-backed technology company developing 802.11 semiconductor products.  Prior to IceFyre, Dan was Senior VP and General Manager, Semiconductor Division, at MOSAID Technologies Inc., leading the successful development of the company's fabless semiconductor businesses. Under Dan's leadership, MOSAID secured patent licensing agreements with five of the world's top semiconductor manufacturers, and developed multiple semiconductor product lines targeting networking equipment.



• Rob Hilkes, President
  

  Mr. Hilkes is a twenty two year veteran of technology marketing and business development. He was most recently principal analyst at Semiconductor Insights, the world's pre-eminent technical analysis company for integrated circuits. Previously, Mr. Hilkes was Director of Product Management at Potentia Semiconductor, developing relationships with key Asian partners and early customers in consumer electronics applications for Potentia products. As Director of Product Management at Tundra Semiconductor, Mr. Hilkes defined the roadmap for RapidIO, working strategically with IBM and Motorola (Freescale). As MOSAID's Director of Marketing and later as Product Line Director, Mr. Hilkes defined the company's position as a provider complex ICs for high-performance networking. He has also held increasingly senior marketing and product management positions at Gennum Corporation, AT&T and NCR Corporation.

  Throughout his career, Rob has been instrumental in aligning corporate capabilities with business goals, and defining the product roadmaps and early customer and partner relationships necessary for commercial success.

  Rob has written extensively in EETimes and various other industry magazines and technical journals, and spoken at several industry conferences on a wide array of topics.

  Rob holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Board of Directors

The eSight Board of Directors comprises Conrad Lewis, Dan Mathers, Drs. John Granda, Sanjay Sharma and Dan McCarthy .

Board of Advisors

eSight Corporation's “Board of Advisors” meets regularly with senior management to review the company's strategic direction, and to provide invaluable insight. As members of the Board of Advisors, these people bring many years of experience as practitioners, researchers, and patients, and share a common passion to improve the quality of life for those suffering from acute, inoperable visual impairments.

• Dan McCarthy, Certified General Accountant and eSight Director
  

  A Certified General Accountant, Mr. McCarthy has over 25 years of financial and operational management experience with technology based companies. He has over 15 years experience as Chief Financial Officer at Senstar Corporation, Prior Data Sciences, ProMIRA Software and Gallium Software. He previously held senior corporate finance positions with AES Data, a $180 Million company operating in 6 countries and Venturetek a Toronto based Venture Capital firm.

  Dan's background also includes operational responsibilities for order fulfillment, product management, engineering and manufacturing. Dan was a member of the founding management team for ProMIRA Software Inc and in early 1998 Mr. McCarthy executed the sale of ProMIRA to Manugistics Inc for $110 Million.

  Since 2000 Dan has acted as consultant to a number of organizations, specializing in integrating operational performance and corporate models with corporate strategy and the financial control system. In addition to providing leadership in a number of operational projects, Dan has been instrumental in various successful fund raising and exit transactions.

• Pat Beirne, Chief Technology Officer
  

  Mr. Beirne joined Mitel in 1976 as a junior engineer. There, he learned the practical aspects of electronics and manufacturing that would serve him well later. Mr. Beirne assumed successively more senior engineering positions, and was pivotal in the design of several turning-point products in the early life of Mitel, including the SX200, SX20 and the SmART dialer. He was also involved in chip design at Mitel, accumulating 22 patents.

  In 1985, Pat joined Michael Cowpland in the early days of Corel. In 1989, Pat and his team created CorelDraw!, a world leading software drawing package. In the 1990's, Pat continued to work in software and hardware designs, finishing with the Netwinder, a small leading-edge low power computer. Although failing as a business, the Netwinder received much critical acclaim (Perhaps the Netwinder was ahead of its time; Today we its echo in the “Mac Mini”, almost the same size, power and price as the Netwinder).

  Between his work at Mitel and Corel, Pat has been involved with the design and production of products that have had sales totaling more than $3 Billion.

  In 2000, Pat moved to March Networks and MKC Networks, both offshoots of the Terry Matthews high tech incubator.

  Pat has a B.A.Sc. (Toronto, 1975) in Engineering Science and an M.A.Sc. (Carleton, 2006) in Biomedical Engineering.



• Roger Colbeck, Engineering Advisor
  

  Mr. Colbeck is currently Director of the Ottawa Design Centre for Power Integrations Canada. Previously, as Vice President of Engineering for Potentia Semiconductor, Mr. Colbeck oversaw the company’s successful acquisition by Power Integrations. A veteran of high tech R&D, he brings over 23 years of demonstrated industry leadership to eSight. As Vice President, Engineering at MOSAID Semiconductor, Mr. Colbeck built MOSAID's chip development capability and transformed the R&D organization from a provider of memory design services. Under his leadership MOSAID developed several high-performance networking system-on-chip products. He has also held senior technical and management positions at ATI Technologies, and Mitel, leading development organizations in such areas as networking, memory, graphics, and telecom ICs.

  Roger holds multiple patents in the areas of mixed-signal CMOS Design of Communications ICs and has authored and presented numerous papers. He has also served on various Canadian and international academic and industrial semiconductor consortia and technical committees.

  Roger holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Carleton University in Ottawa.



• Dr. John Granda (Optometrist & eSight Director)
  

  Dr. Granda's chosen field of interest is understanding how visual sensory processing affects human performance and perception. John is very active as a lecturer, researcher and clinician on Sports Vision Sciences, helping elite athletes to optimize their visual-mental-physical performance. John graduated from the School of Optometry at the University of Waterloo.

• Dr. Rejean Munger (Chief Scientist)
  

  Mr. Munger is currently Senior Scientist, Vision, at the Ottawa Health Research Institute. He is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine, and the Clifford, Gladys and Lorna J. Wood Chair for Research in Vision. Rejean's research currently includes image processing algorithms for enhancing visual performance for people with acute, inoperable retinal and macular diseases.

• Dr. Sanjay Sharma (Retinal Specialist & eSight Director)
  

  Dr. Sharma is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Queen's University. He is editor-in-chief of InsiderMedicine.com, a physician led news organization, and co-editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Eye Care, an international journal for eye surgeons. Dr. Sharma has authored over 150 scientific papers and co-authored the American Medical Association¹s textbook ŒEvidence Based to Value based Medicine¹. Sanjay was awarded fellowships from Harvard Medical School (1998), and Jefferson Medical College (1997). His areas of research are Macular Degeneration, Health-Technology Assessment, and Patient-Related Outcomes. Sanjay graduated from Dalhousie University (1991), and was resident in Ophthalmology at Queen's (1995).

• Dr. Graham Strong (Optometrist)
  
  A Low Vision Rehabilitation Specialist for over 35 years, Dr. Strong is a Professor and Director of the Centre for Sight Enhancement at the University of Waterloo School of Optometry.  He is Adjunct Scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.  Graham’s primary research focus is technology-assisted rehabilitation for people with impaired vision.  Widely published in various academic journals, and a frequent invited speaker at conferences, Dr. Strong is a recognized leader in the field of low vision rehabilitation.
  
  
• Dr. Martin ten Hove, (Neuro-Ophthalmologist)
  

  Dr. ten Hove is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head in the Department of Ophthalmology at Queen’s University. Dr ten Hove, who specializes in Neuro-Ophthalmology, completed his post-graduate medical education at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami. Dr. ten Hove, the author of numerous articles that have appeared in the peer-reviewed literature, serves on the Editorial Board for the Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology and the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology. Dr. ten Hove’s research interests focus on the effects of head trauma and neurological disorders on human vision.

Conrad Lewis was inspired to fund eSight because of his family's unfortunate experience with inoperable visual impairments. Two sisters, Anne and Julia, have a genetic macular condition called Stargardt's disease which has rendered them legally blind. Conrad’s wife, Susan, is severely nearsighted and has suffered two retinal detachments and a macular hole. Anne, Julia and Susan all dedicate significant time to eSight as advocates for the millions who suffer from the kinds of visual impairments eSight products will address.

• Susan Acheson - Patient Advisor
  
• Julia Lewis - Patient Advisor
  
• Anne Lewis - Patient Advisor