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  • Leadership

      QUASAR has a dynamic staff of professionals with complementary expertise in executive management, research, engineering, manufacturing, sales and marketing. The team is largely comprised of technical and scientific professionals (~85% technical/scientific staff with > 25% of them holding Ph.D.’s), and is led by:
    • Andrew D. Hibbs, PhD

          - Founder
          Dr. Hibbs earned his PhD in Physics, and his B.A. and M.S. in Engineering, all from the University of Cambridge and was a leading scientific and industrial figure in the low-frequency electromagnetic sensing community.
          Before founding QUASAR in 1998, Dr. Hibbs served as CEO of Quantum Magnetics, where he oversaw all aspects of corporate growth and product development. Dr. Hibbs was responsible for shepherding an explosive detection system from early scientific investigation to commercially available product. He also secured private equity investments and successfully negotiated the acquisition of Quantum Magnetics by Invision. While at QM, Dr. Hibbs acquired all rights to IBM’s large portfolio of superconducting materials, device patents, and know-how.

          Dr. Hibbs has been responsible for many important advances over a broad range of electromagnetic instrumentation. These include:

          • • QUASAR’s proprietary electric field sensors, which permit the first true free-space electric field measurements
          • • A SQUID-based imaging instrument (1992 R&D 100 Award), which enabled a superconducting sensor to make high sensitivity measurements while operating in an oscillating magnetic field (over 50 units sold worldwide)
          • • The first commercially available Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) explosive detector (1995 R&D 100 Award)
          • • A SQUID-based variable temperature NMR system for very low frequency measurements

          His many awards include the R&D 100 Award in 1992, 1995 and 2010, the TR 100 Award from MIT Technology Review and the Technology Innovation of the Year Award from Aviation Week & Space Technology in 1997, Technology of the Year Award, Sensors Category, SBIR in 1998, Grand Winner of the SBIR Technology of the Year award in 1999. Dr. Hibbs was named “Person of the Year” by Superconductor Week in 1994, and his most recent award was Gold at the World’s Best Technology Marketplace competition.

          Dr. Hibbs passed away on January 8th, 2015. He is survived by his wife and four children, as well as five companies he founded: Quantum Applied Science and Research (QUASAR), QUASAR Federal Systems, Electronic Biosystems, Advanced Neurometrics, and GroundMetrics.
    • Walid Soussou, PhD

          - CEO
        Dr. Walid Soussou, leads QUASAR’s efforts at developing commercial applications of dry-electrode EEG technology. Dr. Soussou leverages his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Southern California (USC), expertise in Brain-Computer-Interfaces, and experience in sleep research, for developing commercial applications of wearable EEG/EOG/EMG/ECG sensors. At QUASAR, Dr. Soussou has raised several million dollars for R&D in the form of research grants from the NIH, DARPA, Army, Navy, and Air Force. In 2010, he launched the first wireless dry electrode EEG system into the market, and continues to develop QUASAR’s cutting-edge sensor technology and explore their commercial applications.
    • Melissa Poquette

          - President
        Ms. Poquette holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Southern California (USC). In addition, she has been a Patent Agent registered to practice before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office since 2010. Combining her technical and intellectual property (IP) skills, Ms. Poquette has been managing the QUASAR team to ensure program goals are successfully achieved, oversee the financial and business operations of the company, and protect critical IP.