Oral History Interview with Bahman Taheri by Matthew Crawford

June 27, 2023
Location of Interview: Bahman Taheri’s Office at AlphaMicron in Kent, Ohio

Liquid Crystal Oral History Project
Department of History
Kent State University

Transcript produced by Sharp Copy Transcription

DR. MATTHEW CRAWFORD: My name is Matthew Crawford. I'm a Historian of Science at Kent State University. Today is June 27th, 2023. I am interviewing Dr. Bahman Taheri in his office at AlphaMicron in Kent, Ohio. Dr. Taheri, thanks for agreeing to speak with me today.

DR. BAHMAN TAHERI: Thank you very much!

CRAWFORD: First, can you tell us your current title and institutional affiliation?

TAHERI: Sure. I am the CEO and the CTO of AlphaMicron. I am also an Adjunct Professor of Chemical Physics at Kent State University.

CRAWFORD: Can you also tell us how you identify yourself as a scientist and your main field or research and innovation?

TAHERI: I associate myself as being a physicist, first and foremost. In between that area, then I would subcategorize it as an optical physicist and a liquid crystal scientist.

CRAWFORD: Great. I want to start with your early life just so we can get some context on who you are and where you're coming from. I wonder if you could just tell us when you were born, where you grew up, what your early childhood was like.

TAHERI: I was born on September 3rd, 1965, in Tehran, Iran. I was there until I was about four or five years old. Then I came to the U.S. and was in Boston, where my dad attended Harvard Business School. Then I went back to Iran, to a different city called Mashhad, and I was there until I was about nine, or maybe ten. Then I came back to Tehran and I was there until I was 13, close to 14. That would have been right during the Revolution. So, December 1978, we left Iran and I went to England with my mom and my sister. I went to a boarding school there, in actually Kent [laughs].

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: It was called Sutton Valence School. I was there for four years. Then, from that boarding school then I came to California, to Sausalito, which is north of San Francisco, and I was there for a few years, went to a junior college there. Then from there, I went to Cal Poly where I studied physics. After that, I went to Oklahoma—Oklahoma State University—to study laser physics and optics. Then I came to Kent to work with Bill Doane.

CRAWFORD: When you moved to Sausalito, California, when was that?

TAHERI: That was 1982.

CRAWFORD: 1982, okay. What was it like—because you moved around quite a bit, and quite substantially—to the U.S., back to Iran, to England—

TAHERI: Sure.

CRAWFORD: —what was that experience like for you as a kid?

TAHERI: It was very, very interesting. When I was in Iran, we lived in Tehran. It was a pretty modernized society. So basically we lived in a nice apartment complex. We had a lot of amenities, associated with everything. Not only that, but we were part of probably doing better than most people at that point, so we had people working in the house, and stuff like that. Then when I went to London, it was—even though in the summers I would have gone to London; we would go visit England every summer just for a few months or whatever—but still, moving there was quite a shock. The all-boys boarding school in England is not well known for its technological advancements.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: The buildings that we were in were—the first one we went to was about 400 years old—

CRAWFORD: Wow.

TAHERI: —the building, itself. For a 14-year-old to go in there, it was—13-year-old actually—it was pretty scary. The dorms had these little rooms, and there were four or five of these boys in there. We had to share the dorm room. Then the bathroom was in the basement, subbasement. You’d go down there at night. Every spooky movie was exactly that. So, it was pretty, pretty daunting. Pretty daunting. London at that point wasn’t the metropolis that it is now. It still was evolving, if you will. Now it’s a different world, but back then it was a little different.

CRAWFORD: Right, right. So this would have been like the late seventies?

TAHERI: ’79 through ’82. Late ’78, ’79, through ’82, maybe to the end of ’82. Now, then when I came to California, it was very different again. It was sunny. It was nice.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: Again, all boys, going to—a complete system there. Now, I did my O-levels in England. They had O-levels and A-levels there. Then you would go to university. O-levels and A-levels are a little bit weird, in the sense that they don’t directly correspond to the U.S.’s high school system. O-level is not considered a high school graduate yet. A-level is usually like the first year of college. So, once you finish O-level, you have a two year for A-level. If you wish, the first year of A-level would have corresponded to high school. So when I came here with O-levels, it wasn’t enough to go to college. So I enrolled in junior college. In fact, we didn’t have a lot of money anyway to go to college, and those things, because we would have been—we still would have been associated out of state. Then it took a while until we got our residency, permanent residency. Once that occurred, and the junior college was okay, then I transferred to Cal Poly to study—first, I went to electronic engineering, but then I switched to physics, very quickly.

CRAWFORD: I just want to take a step back for a minute. Would you mind telling us, what did your parents do? You mentioned your father went to Harvard Business School.

TAHERI: At the time, my father, he got his doctorate in I think pharmaceutical science or something like that. But he was working for the government. Then he went to the Business School sent by the government. Then when he came back, he managed, in fact, this entity in Mashhad, which is like the second-largest city in Iran, and in there, they had this institution which was originally religious-based, but—he wasn’t religious, but what he was doing, he was managing the industrial aspect of that. The institution would invest in a lot of things, and he became the industrialist aspect of that. So he brought in technologies from external to the country—like sugar cane—we had started sugar cane factories, steel factory, and some other—like breadmaking factories—into that region, and he was the one that was responsible for implementing that. So he was an industrialist. So he would go in and out, and he was kind of—that entrepreneurship was in him. My mom was a homemaker. So, we were there, then we came back, and when we came to California—obviously he didn’t—we didn’t expect the Revolution, but also because he was very—he was a very straight shooter, very honest, he didn’t really leave. He would stay there. But when he did leave, because the country was kind of going into a revolution, we didn’t take anything with us. So we had to start from zero, come back up.

CRAWFORD: Really. Wow.

TAHERI: Then later on in his life, he went back and then he lived there. But when he was here, he was—the family had to be together. Right after of course we left, then Iran-Iraq War started, so no one went back. So it was a bit complicated.

CRAWFORD: Sure, sure. It sounded like you said you were visiting England before you moved there to go to boarding school.

TAHERI: Yeah. We would go there in the summers.

CRAWFORD: Did you have family there, or—?

TAHERI: No. No, no. Back then and still—my brother went to a kind of boarding school in England when he was younger, too. Because back then, it was a good thing to go get foreign education. My parents were very strongly advocates of education. And so, we would go there in the summers. We would go to different places, just to take a trip, all these things.

CRAWFORD: So by the time you went to boarding school, you already were familiar with England.

TAHERI: I was familiar with it. I was familiar with the—well, not quite in that sense, because we would be visiting. We were not going to go—we would have a nice apartment somewhere, in London, that we would be there, and we would be visiting London. Maybe go to school in the mornings just to learn English or something like that. So, I did learn English at a younger age. But of course it’s just different.

CRAWFORD: Did you have a lot of friends from Iran that did a similar thing?

TAHERI: No. In fact—no. [laughs] We didn’t. There was a friend that—I had a very good friend, and our families were friends. So when we left Iran, him and I left together on the same plane, with our moms. I know everyone says that, but we were on one of the last planes out before they shut the airport. Then we went—and so went to the first boarding school—we went to two boarding schools. The first one we went there, we were together. Then we went to slightly different boarding schools because of different places that we were. But no, that was it.

CRAWFORD: Wow. What was it like taking that flight out of Iran?

TAHERI: It was really interesting. Because when the Revolution occurred, we were in the school—this high school I was in, was pretty well renowned. It was called Alborz. It was pretty well documented. But when the Revolution occurred, you're a kid. You don’t realize the aspects. And we weren’t sure, “Is it really real? Is it just a turmoil?” I think it became real when the Shah of Iran left Iran, too. Then everyone was like, “Uh-oh, this is a bigger thing.” Then we went to the same—we went to this boarding school, and there were a few other people we didn’t know, Iranians, that had fled also. They put us all, these young kids, into a room. England was not at the time the most hospitable place in general. They would put us in these rooms, and then they would basically give us Scrabble, and they tell us to play Scrabble so we can learn English. Except we weren’t really playing. I remember—the funny story there is that we would use the English letters to make Persian words, because that’s what we knew. We didn’t know all that stuff.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: So then they came and they saw that, they got angry, they split us off.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: It was kind of fun. But it was all right. It was a dungeon. It definitely was a dungeon. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: The building—I mean, the doors were—really the building was 400 years old! Basically the doorways were small. And the British had very unique things. They would take cold showers in the morning. Right? I’m like—well, I wasn’t—“Cold shower? What are you talking about? Where is the heat?” Then they’d ask us to do stuff, we would do it, and for breakfast, as a reward, they would give us Marmite.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: And we thought it was a torture. “Why would you give us Marmite? Where’s the honey and the jams and stuff?”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: So it’s a very unique—but there, I learned how to play rugby and cricket, and—it was good. It was very good. I have good memories.
CRAWFORD: I want to ask about your early interest in science. In an interview that appeared in the Journal of Information Displays in 2021, which is published by the Journal for the Society of Information Displays, you stated that you, quote, “wanted to be a physicist ever since you were nine years old.”

TAHERI: That’s completely correct.

CRAWFORD: It seems a little unusual to me for a nine-year-old to really know what a physicist is, let alone be attracted to it, so I wonder if you could talk about that.

TAHERI: Sure. Just to put a little bit of context, in Iran, they emphasized science a lot. When you're in school, they right away teach you math, chemistry, physics. These are the sciences that—from very young age, they do it. Physics was exceptionally cool. And it still is. Because it’s a way of thinking and understanding the world around you. I always thought that was—and I still think—that is the coolest thing. Now, again, you have to understand that the education system there is different than the education system here, in the sense that here, you take certain courses and you can diversify to different courses. “I don’t like this social science,” or “I like”—whatever—math, geog…there, no. You take everything. Everybody takes the same course, and it escalates up. Then depending on your affinity for a particular topic, you'll be moved faster and faster and faster and faster. In that, I was—at the time, I was okay with it, I would say, so then I started moving up faster and faster, and I was just exposed to more and more, and the more I was exposed to it, it just was great. But back then it was more like—more mechanics. It wasn’t in-depth like now.

CRAWFORD: Obviously you might not have been aware of this as a kid, but maybe thinking back—I’m just thinking about what you were telling me about your father being involved in these various industrial projects, it sounds like, to introduce these new industrial processes, or known industrial processes—it sounds like they were new to Iran at the time. Do you think that was part of the reason why science and math were such an emphasis in education?

TAHERI: I do. He was himself very much oriented in that way. But when you would go and you start looking at the factories and the equipment—and sometimes I would go with him—you see these machineries being able to create these things; you can’t be but awed by it. It’s just an amazing thing, to have imagined it and create it. Absolutely.

CRAWFORD: In school, you're getting some of the theory of physics and mechanics, but outside of school, you're going to factories with your dad and seeing these machines.

TAHERI: Every once in a while, yeah, yeah. And math was a big part of it. You know how it is—sometimes, also, to be fair, sometimes when you are good at something, then you kind of move toward it better. Like, “Oh, I might do better. It’s easier. It comes to me easier.” So then you can move faster on that. Ask me about geography, and I was so bad.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: I’m just like, “I’ll never become one.” [laughs] It’s just like—back then, you had to memorize all this stuff. What’s the export of, I don’t know, Kenya? And you're like—-

CRAWFORD: [laughs] You said also—and again, this may not have been formulated in your mind as a kid, but you said that physics is a way of thinking and understanding the world. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what you mean by that.

TAHERI: To me, physics is a basis of logic. Much like math is. Math is obviously the—they say it’s the language of logic, and I understand that. But to me, physics is understanding how to solve a problem. The problem itself is irrelevant. There’s two things with physics which is just unbelievably fascinating and it’s great. One is that you start thinking about something—some things are very simple. You do a simple imagining; one thing leads to another. Great. But now physics comes and takes this concept, a very simple concept, and starts extending it beyond that. If you think about it, the way I see it, the whole—things get created, and things become great, when you can predict. When you can predict the next second, the next minute, the next hour. If you can predict it, then you can take actions, which you cannot do [inaudible]. The fact that I can hold the cup and let it go and it drops, that tells me, okay, there’s gravity. That’s fine; you can look at it like that. But that tells me that if I drop something, it always wants to go down. Now, if I know something wants to always go down, then I would say, “Okay, well, what happens if I want to stop it?” Well, if I want to stop it, then automatically then I feel something. But maybe something else can go, and now suddenly I can create a pulley. Once I create a pulley—why? Because I know this is going to pull it down. So that concept of being able to predict something that’s going to occur is the basis of everything that is invented here in the world, right? Because they can predict what happened next. Physics is a way that it allows you to do it. And it’s the basis for all engineering, right? When you learn basic mechanics, then that becomes mechanical engineering. Basic electricity and magnetism, that becomes electronic engineering. Basics of optics, that becomes the photonics. All of these things are there. Whenever I went to engineering—and people pushed me, always go “Oh, engineering is where the jobs are,”—you would go there, and the problem you hit is that it would become formulaic. Just, “Okay, just plug in and get the answer.” But that core is more interesting than the answer, in that sense. How you can achieve that answer becomes very cool. The math is a tool. If you can answer it even without it, through logic, it’s even cooler. For me.

CRAWFORD: You talked a little bit about your education in Iran. When you went to the boarding school in England, and then beyond that, did you feel like you had the opportunities to continue to develop your interest in physics, and your knowledge?

TAHERI: Yeah. In fact, this boarding school was very good. To be fair to them, technically they were very good. In fact, when I was taking the O-levels, they had this thing which was called AO, which is Advanced O-level, which is somewhere because A-level and O-level. I took the physics of that one, which usually you have to wait for a year, so I was about a year ahead on that one. Then also for O-levels they make you take all these other ones. I took religious studies, which was Christianity, Bible and stuff, and all of this other stuff. But physics was still more advanced than those other ones. Again it was just—because you have passion, obviously you spend more time, just interested.

CRAWFORD: Did you have the opportunity to do any lab work, or was this mostly text-based?

TAHERI: No. Well, they did some lab work, but it was very rudimentary at the time. It was high school at that point. They would do it—they had their own—a lot of memorization was part of it, and a lot of homework. Just doing the math. But not as much in the lab.

CRAWFORD: You moved to California in 1982, and if I understood correctly you go to junior college for a couple of years.

TAHERI: Mmhmm.

CRAWFORD: Then you decide to go to Cal Poly. I wonder if you could talk about the decision to go to Cal Poly. Did you consider other schools, or what went into that?

TAHERI: No. First of all I picked that because my friend was going there. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not even sure I would have gotten into those other schools, because I was—again, it was out of state, and this thing. But we went there. Again, at first I tried to go to electronic, but I just—that wasn’t it. Cal Poly is a fantastic school. I think I got very, very lucky to have gone there. The professors were amazing. We were taught by the professors. They liked it. Any physics course that they could offer, I took it, whether it was relevant or not. Relativity, atmospheric physics, optics, acoustics, anything. Anything that they could offer. I think I was in that place maybe an extra four years after junior college, so I didn’t graduate very quickly. I was just there and I would take all the courses I could. It was really good. It was really good.

CRAWFORD: I know you graduated from Cal Poly with a B.S. in Science in 1989. What year did you start there, roughly?

TAHERI: [laughs] There was a bit of a confusion, because when I graduated—I thought I graduated, and I applied, and I went to a master’s program at Oklahoma State. Because before you graduate, you can apply and go there. It was all fine, and a year or a year and a half later, they called and they said, “We don’t see your diploma yet.” Then I went to Cal Poly and I said, “Where’s my diploma?” They said, “Oh, oh, one of your teachers has an incomplete. You have to finish that.”

CRAWFORD: Oh, geez. [laughs]

TAHERI: [laughs] So, I had to finish a paper.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: I think my master’s is like almost a year later or something, ridiculous. But it’s basically—that was it. But the Cal Poly one, I don’t know. I don’t remember all the dates exactly on this thing, but I assume it was five years, four years, at Cal Poly, something like that.

CRAWFORD: There was something that stood out to me—I was looking briefly at your dissertation. I can’t profess to really understand the science of it [laughs] but I always read the acknowledgements because it’s interesting to me. One thing you wrote in the acknowledgements—this is for your PhD dissertation—you wrote—and I’m quoting you now—“As an undergraduate I felt I could get through life with my limited knowledge bypassing any tedious work like homework.” End quote.

TAHERI: It’s true!

CRAWFORD: I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that.

TAHERI: Oh, it actually is an interesting story. If you want, I’ll tell you. It’s actually probably one of the most interesting stories of my life. I didn’t take notes. I don’t take notes. Usually I had a pretty good memory, and I would spend time goofing around. Typically I was pretty good, so I didn’t have to do a lot of stuff. I didn’t do homework. I never did homework. I couldn't do it. I had a professor. His name was Ron Zammit. Z-A-M-M-I-T. It is interesting, because this name will pop up a few times in my life going forward. He’s a really fantastic teacher, just one of those great teachers that you can find. He used to teach optics. I took an optics course with him. I don’t know if I wrote this in my acknowledgements or not, but I took an optics course with him. Again, I would just go to class, barely would go to class and whatever. I would just show up for the exams, take the exams, and move on. At the end, I remember going to his office after my finals, and I told him, “Hey, Dr. Zammit, do you have my final?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Ah. 85.” He goes, “No, no, no, that was the top score. The next one was like 50.” I’m going, “Oh!” Then I felt cocky. “I’m still good.” “So, what did I get in the class? Obviously an A, right?” He goes, “No. A C!” I said, “What do you mean, C?! You just told me my exams were like 20, 30 points over.” He goes, “Yeah, but you didn’t hand in the homework.” I said, “Yeah, but the homework is for me to learn to do it. Clearly I have known it, so I don’t need to do the homework.” He said, “No, homework is for you to do homework.” [laughs] He made that point. So, he kept my grade. He didn’t change it. He gave me a C. The funny thing is, the person that didn’t let me graduate with that thing was him! Because [laughs] he wanted me to finish a paper. We submitted a paper. So I said, “Okay.” Then he said, “But here's the point. Here’s the point.” He said, “Why don’t you take my advanced optics with me?” I said, “Okay, I’ll take advanced optics.” He said—and I was always looking for a job—he goes, “And if you want, you can work for me.” I said, “Okay.” He says, “You can TA for me. I need people to grade stuff.” So I took his course, and the first week, I said, “Hey, you haven't given me the jobs for the TA.” He goes, “Yeah.” The homework from the same optics class I was in, he gives it to me, and he goes, “Correct these.” I said, “Okay, that’s a little weird. Okay. Give me the solutions.” He goes, “No. Go solve it.” So then I had to go solve the problems and then grade other kids—

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow. [laughs]

TAHERI: —in my own class. And here’s where he was so brilliant. I kept telling him—it’s just—it’s a very unorthodox thing to do, right?

CRAWFORD: Yeah. [laughs]

TAHERI: But by the end of the class, I was the one that would go to these students and would tell them, “Why didn’t you hand in your homework?”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: Then I go—I’d say, “Don’t be stupid. Just hand in—ten minutes, hand it in!” You know what I mean? So he literally changed my perspective on homework.

CRAWFORD: Wow, wow.

TAHERI: That’s the thing. Then I was working with him on optics and holography, and we did two-color holographies, which back then was just unbelievable. We wrote a paper together on how to interface Mac to the system. I had to write a thesis for my undergraduate, which was some robotics thing, which I didn’t finish because I figured, “Who cares?” but then he made me—really, he said, “When you start something, you have to finish it.” Then he’s the one that also when I was graduating, I said, “Well, I don’t know if I’m going to go to grad school or whatever.” He said, “No, no, you have to go to grad school. You're really—optics is your thing. You have to go do it.” He said, “Lasers—you're really good at this thing.” He’s the one that suggested Oklahoma State. In fact, he wrote the guy, the professor who was letting people in at the time, this long letter, basically saying, “Get this kid in. You won’t be disappointed.” At that point my GPA wasn’t even that good, because I didn’t really—I was just doing whatever I wanted. I was goofing around. Then I went to Oklahoma State. There, they had a laser lab which, bar none, was the best. That’s a whole different story. But the point here is Ron Zammit was the one that really shaped my life in that format, as an undergraduate. Took chances, did this thing. Even then after a while when I was here, he would sometimes call me and say, “I’m going to send you an intern.” And he would just—not, “Can you get a—?”—he would send me an intern. I had to accept it.

CRAWFORD: I’m wondering too, because you mentioned at Cal Poly you took any physics course you could take, it sounds like you were taking courses on all kinds of different physics. How did you settle on optics?

TAHERI: It was Ron. Ron Zammit. It was just—it was fascinating. I liked that, and I liked quantum and relativity and stuff like that. But optics was—that was it.

CRAWFORD: Your decision for optics was primarily because of this professor, but you said you also liked quantum and relativity. Why not do that?

TAHERI: Well, undergraduate, you don’t know anything. You have to go—when you go to grad school, to go there. In grad school, I considered both. I worked with—Oklahoma, at that point there was a professor there, his name was Richard Powell. Later on, by the way, he became—I was his last student because he went and became director of the Optical Sciences Center in Arizona, which is probably one of the best in the country. Again, over in Oklahoma, I also started taking a bunch of courses. I took high-energy physics, quantum, optics, lasers. I took a bunch. I had this teacher for group theory—it’s like a math group physics, whatever—unbelievable teacher. Just fantastic. He would teach it. He loved physics. At nights I used to work late at night because at that point I was doing homework. I really, really wanted to do theoretical physics with him. Unfortunately, he had some emotional issues, and he ended up taking his life, his own life.

CRAWFORD: Oh, I’m sorry.

TAHERI: So, I went to laser physics, experimental laser physics.

CRAWFORD: You've talked a lot about Professor Zammit. Were there any other—

TAHERI: Lafon, the guy—the quantum mechanics guy, Lafon—L-A-F-O-N. I think he was one of the first people to find the orbits of lithium. But really—it was an amazing thing. He was a fantastic teacher. He was absolutely brilliant. Brilliant. He would be working at night, coding—he taught me two very, very interesting things, which I still use today. He was coding and everything like that. But I took a quantum class with him. Or, no, it was a mathematical physics. Or quantum—no, it was quantum. I’m sorry; it was quantum physics. Two interesting things occurred there. One was, he gave us a homework, and it was, “Find this integral.” There was an integral of quantum mechanics, the overlap integral between two wave functions, and you have to solve it. Then part B was, “What does it mean?” Finding the solution to that quantum, that thing, it was like unbelievably hard. I was spending weeks trying to solve this integral. I mean, literally—I’ll show you one of the things—but this was before Google and stuff, right? These are the things that they had. I don’t know if you've ever seen these or not.

CRAWFORD: No!

TAHERI: Oh! [laughs] This is—this book is like—I don’t know [inaudible] look at all of these. These are all integrals. All integrals, right?

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: So for us to solve it, it took me a week of working, completely to solve this thing.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

TAHERI: Going through all of these things.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: Then the second part was simple, is an overlap integral is usually the probability of finding the electron there. So I went there, and I found an actual formula, then solved it. So I gave it in. I’m God. I went there, gave it to him. I was so proud. He comes back and he gives it to me and he’s like, “I have to tell you, in the courses that I’ve ever taught, nobody has ever solved this.” He told me this.

CRAWFORD: Really!

TAHERI: Yeah. He said—in his thing. Then I look at it, and he’s given me five out of ten. I go, “Are you kidding me?”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: “I solved this thing. You're saying the grade is five of ten.” He says, “Yeah, but I don’t care about that. No one cares about solving that. The bigger problem was B. Do you understand what that integral means? Mathematically, you plugged it into the computer and it gave you a numerical value of 0.2. But you didn’t understand well enough what that other thing means. So this is all fancy stuff, but—I don’t care.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: It was a beautiful statement, because it told me what is really important. My point was solving this thing, but his point was understanding the meaning of what you solved. That was an amazing thing. The second one was with vectors and representation and group theory, and I kept putting the vectors—you know, like I put matrix, and the typical—I don’t know if you know this stuff about matrix and stuff like that. And I’m saying, “Well, this is the vector that’s going there.” You put in Vector A, B, C at the top in the matrix or whatever. After class, he said, “Taheri, stay behind.” I stayed behind. He said, “I want you to take this book to the Physics office.” I said, “Okay.” He goes, “Do you know where the Physics office is?” I said, “No.” He goes, “Well, here’s our”—he drew it on the board—“here’s our classroom, and show me where the Physics office is.” I said, “Here!” He goes, “No! The Physics office is not there. The Physics office is there. This is a representation of the Physics office, not the [inaudible].”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: “Matrix and vectors is representation of this thing.” So it was such a—and I went, “Oh, yeah, that’s a good point.” So everything I’ve kind of—he would say, “Don’t use these things. You have to understand the basics of it.” He would say, “If you can’t explain it”—he was one of those that says, “If you can’t explain it to me, it means you don’t know what you're talking about.” It was that type of mentality. Brilliant man. And a fantastic physicist. And a lovely guy. So that was the next guy that really helped me with my life.

CRAWFORD: He was at Oklahoma.

TAHERI: Oklahoma State. So I have been lucky with professors in my life.

CRAWFORD: It sounds a little bit like this Professor Zammit really helped you to think about going to grad school.

TAHERI: Absolutely, 100%.

CRAWFORD: You weren’t considering that before then? What were you thinking you might do after college? [laughs]

TAHERI: Well, you know, you're young, you're an idiot. You know. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Did you have any other interests that competed with your interest in science, or were you pretty set?

TAHERI: No, it wasn’t that. It was I hadn’t really pursued those particular areas. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I still was kind of not settled exactly where I wanted. Then when he said, “Oklahoma,” I was like, “Really? I’m not going to Oklahoma.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: He says, “No, no. You’ve got to go to this place.” Stillwater, Oklahoma, of all places. I mean, I used to joke that “Stillwater, even the water doesn’t move there. Now you want me to go and sit there?” In fact, it turned out okay, because I was a bit rowdy when I was an undergraduate. I think his point was, if you stay in California, you'll get too distracted with—other activities. Oklahoma allowed me to not have other activities, other fun activities. You're young; Cal Poly, you can go to the beach, you can go whatever. There’s nice-looking females and stuff. You know, whatever it is. But whatever it was.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Just out of curiosity, because of the nature of my project, did you learn about liquid crystals as an undergraduate?

TAHERI: No, not at all. I was working with lasers, and they had all the lasers. I tell you, that Oklahoma State lab, Richard Powell, Dick Powell, whatever, he had the best lasers. I mean, we had alexandrite laser serial number one. People from Berkeley would come in so they can do experiments in our lab. People from Russia used to come in to do experiments in our lab. Because we had everything.

CRAWFORD: I’m going to ask a very basic question here. You said an Alexandria laser, serial number—

TAHERI: Alexandrite.

CRAWFORD: Alexandrite, sorry.

TAHERI: Usually the crystal has to be—when they first were invented, the first one that came out, he bought it. I mean, like he had the money to buy anything he wanted to buy.

CRAWFORD: I see, I see. So that was the first—

TAHERI: Yeah. And we had nanosecond lasers, picosecond lasers. You name it, we had it. That lab was so well equipped. Then as he moved on in this thing, I was the last one there, so a lot of the lab equipment, I was handling it, so I was able to dismantle lasers, put them back together, and I was able to do a lot of that. That was my most fun time in a lab. If you're asking, that’s what it is. By far.

CRAWFORD: Did you like dismantling lasers and that sort of hands-on stuff?

TAHERI: You have to, because you have to remember, now they look pretty good, but 30 years ago, they were barely moving. You would spend a week aligning the laser to actually get the light to come out, for you to do the experiment. It’s not the days you have now; you click it on and it works.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: It was a tough world. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: I think it might be interesting if you could talk a little bit about what that was like. Why did it take a week to align a laser? How did that process work?

TAHERI: Sure. Like everything else, the technology has evolved, but you have to realize that back there, they were creating new laser wavelengths and new lights and everything. If you look at it, people were working let’s say on diode lasers. Now people are talking about blue laser and green laser and red laser; they weren’t there! The blue laser was not even there! People were working on gallium nitride, the II-VI semiconductors, III-V semiconductors, to make the laser light. But now, imagine a laser is a cavity with the mirrors, and you do it. There were companies selling you that, let’s say—there were Quantum, Continuum, other companies that would sell these lasers. But these lasers were—they were sold a few at a time. They weren’t off the shelf stuff. The components were not off the shelf. And they weren’t stable. There was a flash lamp that would flash the light to get in there. We didn’t have LEDs. You have to imagine that the technology is very far back. I mean, thinking about this, our laser, CW laser—that’s continuous wave laser—we would have an argon ion laser, and it would be pretty powerful if it was putting 10 watts out. Or, 20-watt laser was like, “Oh my god, be careful with it,” right? Just to give you a perspective, nowadays you go to Germany and you can buy a laser that is 100 kilowatts, and you flip a switch and you turn them on. People didn’t know how to do it.

We were working with University of Oklahoma—that was the beginning of using lasers in medicine. Think about 25, 30 years ago—the world moves on. I remember actually Powell coming and telling me—and Antonio, the guy you saw in the lab—he said, “You guys go to Norman. There’s a doctor there, and he wants to do—” So because we were laser physicists, we would go there—“Can I help you?” He goes, “Yeah, the laser doesn't come on.” It’s like, “Oh! This is the button to turn it on?” “Yeah.” Go back. It was that level of lack of understanding. Of course the technologies evolved very fast. That’s what I’m trying to say. Imagine 10 to 150 kilowatts, so imagine this thing going all the way down; this is where it was. The lasers were bare minimum. Literally you wouldn't turn the laser on. You would take the lid off and you’d play around with it to make it work, and it was always the lid was off. It was like an old first car, right? [laughs] You just go from A to B and then open it up.

CRAWFORD: So, you take the lid off the laser. What are you seeing in there?

TAHERI: In a laser, basically it’s a very simple system. What they do is, when you pump the light in a crystal—usually they were crystals; they have to be really good—you pump it; the electron goes up, goes into excited state, and then it wants to go back down, so it emits light. Now, if you frustrate it by hitting it really, really hard, and not letting the light come out, then it becomes—let me—can I just answer this?

CRAWFORD: Yeah, sure.

TAHERI: Yeah, the lasers were back there. So you're frustrating it, so usually the simplest one is there’s a cavity, and then you put these mirrors there, and basically says, “Hey, if you propagate along the laser line, along this cavity, then what I will do is I’ll let you come out.” Then you get an avalanche effect, so basically more of them are up than they're down, and then when one comes, then it induces the second one to come down, the third to come down, whatever. But then when it goes and hits this mirror and comes back, whatever you created this direction goes back, they're going to increase more. So everyone says, “Oh, wait a minute. If I go down that way, then I’m doing much better.” So you get, if you wish, a coherence, there. That means they all go down together. When they do that, the light that comes out is coherent and is very directional. But, you start moving that mirror a little bit, then the light doesn't go back on itself a lot; it moves the—it kind of walks off. And then you don’t get a laser. So literally—and a laser is one of the few things that it’s either on or not. It’s not like saying, “Well, it’s a bit of a laser.” No. It either works or doesn't.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: And that’s frustrating. Very frustrating.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] I can imagine. I’m curious if you know—it sounds like it had something to do with the work of this Professor Powell, but why did Oklahoma State become such an important center for laser work?

TAHERI: I don’t know. My guess—he was a Navy guy, background. I don’t know. He was a pretty well renowned physicist. He was one of the people that did initial spectroscopy. He went to Oklahoma for whatever reason he went there. Like I said, afterwards he went and became the director of the Optical Sciences Center. He was the president of the Optical Society of America. He was a pretty well-known guy. So I think a lot of the funding came to him. Now, it could be that because he was in Oklahoma, more Army money went to him than the others? I don’t know.

CRAWFORD: What was it like being a graduate student at Oklahoma State? Was there a good community of grad students? Were you part of a lab group?

TAHERI: That’s a good question. I spent quite a lot of time in the lab. Once I passed that Cal Poly thing, my grad school is when I really dove into physics. I was in that lab mornings, and then come home and eat, and I would go back into the lab. We had to work at night anyway, because lasers would shake and then go off way and all that. So we worked late at night so no one was around.

CRAWFORD: Huh!

TAHERI: A lot of times, we would work night to the day, and then go home and sleep during the day.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

TAHERI: But it was great. The people in the Physics Department were fantastic. I would be lying if I don’t point out the fact that I’m an Iranian, and there is an inherent [laughs] dislike of Iranians in some of those places. So, it was complicated. It was complicated.

CRAWFORD: So even in the lab, in the Physics Department, you—

TAHERI: You would see some. There were some professors there that—not all of them; there was a bunch of professors who were fantastic. Most of the students were pretty good and openminded. You don’t veer too much off of the campus, at that point. Back then, there was a lot of cowboys. Tumbleweed was—I think that’s where Garth Brooks used to be a bouncer or something like that. So, it’s a nice place, but just there are difficulties, especially during that period. I was there when the Oklahoma City bombing took place.

CRAWFORD: Oh, wow.

TAHERI: I was on a plane back to there, and it was—[laughs] the guy sitting next to me was like—I was coming back from New York. He says, “Where are you going?” I said, “Back to Oklahoma.” He goes, “Are you a journalist?” I go, “No, I’m a student.” He goes, “Oh, where are you from?” I said, “Iran.” He didn’t talk to me after that [laughs] until we landed.

CRAWFORD: Oh, boy, yeah.

TAHERI: Because they thought it was—

CRAWFORD: They didn’t know.

TAHERI: Well, they thought it was some Middle Eastern country. So people were going around at that point looking for Middle Easterns to beat up.

CRAWFORD: Really. Wow.

TAHERI: It was—whatever it was. The culture was—not there. Until the FBI came and said, “Well, we have a guy. He’s a white guy.” [laughs] Until that point, it wasn’t quite there. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Did you ever feel personally in danger at that time?

TAHERI: You have to be careful. You have to be careful. It’s not like they're physically running to try and hurt you, but certainly, they didn’t like Iranians.

CRAWFORD: In the physics program, what was the grad student community like? Were there a good number of international students at that time?

TAHERI: No, there wasn’t a lot of international students. There were some, but not a lot. It was very good. I thought that was a very good community. We spent very good time together. I had a lot of fun in Oklahoma. I met some really nice people, and it was a lot of fun. Some of my best friends, I met them there, and we're still in communication constantly. It was a lot of positives. Obviously there were some negatives and that, but I want to make sure that it’s clear that the negative nowhere near outweighed the positives.

CRAWFORD: It occurs to me—did you consider yourself an international student? Because you had transplanted to California.

TAHERI: You're always—in some of these places, you're always international. In England, you are. In England, it doesn't matter where you are. You know that now they have, the first time now, the prime minister of Indian origin. But they're always like Indian or whatever. The foreigners, we would all be categorized as something. It’s understandable. Inevitably people, as soon as they talk to you, they would say, “Where are you from?” They were always doing that. I was working on laser eye protection back then, so there was even some—sensitivities.

CRAWFORD: Of course. Of course. You said you were spending a lot of time in the lab, as a grad student. Did you have the opportunity to write papers with your advisor?

TAHERI: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

CRAWFORD: Go to conferences?

TAHERI: Oh yeah, we did a lot. We had a bunch of papers. I don’t remember how many. But we were putting out papers a lot. Because our lab—and not because we were brilliant, but we had all the equipment. I learned something there that was, again, one of these life lessons I learned and I use here a lot. My experiment was what I thought was beautiful. It was like looking at a bunch of different materials, looking at transport properties. I was using picosecond lasers, CW lasers, all of these things. I thought this was really, really, very, very unique. Then, I read some papers, and there was a paper from a Russian scientist in some obscure journal basically doing what I was doing!

CRAWFORD: Oh, boy!

TAHERI: Except they couldn't see what I was seeing, not because they didn’t know, but because their equipment wasn’t very good. So I felt bad, in the sense that, yeah, I now saw this new thing, but—so that taught me one thing that I always say now to everyone, even locally in here, is, “Well, if I’ve thought about it, then I have to assume someone else has thought about it.” So the real question is not, “Hey, is this a great, brand-new idea?” The question is, “Why isn’t it out there?” And that’s where the key development occurs. “Why isn’t it out there?” So I learned very early on not to fall in love with the ideas. I want to find out why it doesn’t work, or why isn’t it out there. That was one. The second thing, my supervisor said one thing that stuck with me quite a lot. He said, “Never bet against materials.”

CRAWFORD: Huh. What did he mean by that?

TAHERI: They were talking about, at the time people were looking at blue lasers, and they were looking at zinc selenide, and the first blue laser that they saw with these diode lasers, the first one lasted about 10 seconds in the lab, and everyone was like, “Pff. Good luck. This is never going to be a product.” Right? But lo and behold, as you know, blue lasers are now everywhere, and they're sturdy as a rock! Because technology evolved. Materials get better and better. So don’t—don’t assume that.

CRAWFORD: I have a couple of questions I want to ask about your dissertation research and the experiments you were doing, but it sounds like this story that you're talking about, where you found that there was this group in Russia doing similar work, but it sounds like they didn’t have access to the kind of equipment that you had.

TAHERI: Absolutely.

CRAWFORD: It raises a question. How much do you think, or in your experience, is the work of physics dependent on technology and the equipment that you have?

TAHERI: I think it’s a lot. I was telling my kids that for undergraduate, you might find that England is even better for physics than here, but for grad school, the reason the U.S. is so good is because of the equipment. They were coming here—then people were coming here and we would set up experiments for them. The equipment is—pfwoo!—you have to have the right tool. If you don’t have the right tool, it doesn't work out.

CRAWFORD: What was the focus of your PhD research? You said that you saw this new thing that this Russian group, that wasn’t visible to them because of the equipment they were using. What was it that—?

TAHERI: We were working quite a lot with nonlinear optics. Nonlinear optics, you want to be able to hit it with a nice pulse, picosecond pulses. You want to be able to adjust it. We would have what is known as four-way mixing and stuff like that. And there was a class of material, it was I think—I worked on different materials, actually, to be fair. There was some glass, and then there were some semiconductors and there were some other ones, looking at nonlinearities in the different materials to understand how they work better. But in order for you to do the nonlinearities, you need good lasers. You need good systems. You have different wavelengths. We had good translation stages. We had fantastic optics. The beam qualities were good. So it was better. The data I could get was better. I could formulate it better.

CRAWFORD: What was it you were trying to understand about these materials that you were studying?

TAHERI: To be perfectly honest, at that point, I was just doing everything. A plate. Because I was his last student, he left, and I didn’t go with him. I stayed on. I was in the last year, so I stayed there. A lot of people would come in and wanted to set up an experiment. But imagine, there’s these four or five labs, all state of art lasers; the only grad student who knows how to turn everything on. Or fix it. So, people would come in—I was really lucky, because I had scientists from Hungary, from Mexico, from different parts of the world would come in, brilliant scientists—brilliant—and they wanted to do an experiment. Then we would sit down and discuss what to do, and then we would help set them up, and then they would do an experiment. Then they would bring in these crystals which were—unique [laughs]. They grew the crystals. So it was very kind of—that’s what I mean, in a sense. I was doing biophysics. I was working on something with medical physics. I was working on lasers. I was looking at thermal imaging. I was working on four or five different projects. Probably if I would have put a thesis, I could have probably made another at least one or two theses. But that was because of all these brilliant guys that came in. It wasn’t like my idea, I could write five theses. No. Because these guys were working on all beautiful stuff, so I got involved in a lot of different things—

CRAWFORD: Oh, interesting.

TAHERI: —because of that opportunity that was granted to me, that I was very lucky.

CRAWFORD: Are you saying, just to be clear, that because of the knowledge that you had from working with these lasers, and that kind of experience or tacit knowledge from knowing how to work the equipment, you would essentially kind of consult with these incoming scientists?

TAHERI: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Like they would say, “We want to do this kind of experiment,” and you would be able to kind of tell them—

TAHERI: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: —“Here’s how you can use the—”

TAHERI: And then he would work together, and we would write papers together in some ways, in some of that aspects. I would learn from them, and I was able to—which was really cool, because these guys were brilliant, but at the same time, they were open. What I learned from that was, because I was interacting with different people, was that I was able to translate one knowledge to another. It wasn’t that—I wasn’t a technician. Of course I could set up the laser for them. But I was able to say, “Yeah, but if you do this, it will work out better.” And why? Because a week before I was working on a different material. I’d say, “Oh, yeah, they used this other system, and they were able to capture what you want. Maybe we can set up a different experiment.” They’d go, “Oh, okay.” They would try it. That’s where I got lucky. I’ve been lucky a lot. That helped me cross-pollinate.

CRAWFORD: Were a lot of these experiments for the purposes of characterizing materials and their properties?

TAHERI: Absolutely. Most of it was characterization of materials for the purpose of understanding if they could be used as some form of a nonlinear optical material.

CRAWFORD: I see. Again, from what I was able to find about your trajectory through science, it sounds like you had a postdoc at Oklahoma State after finishing your PhD?

TAHERI: Right. I finished, and then the lady that took over when Powell left, she—I stayed as a postdoc there. She said, “Stay here, because I can’t run the lab.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs] How many years did you do that?

TAHERI: It was only six or nine months. I don’t remember the exact times, of course. I want to tell you that my memory is not that good in terms of timelines, but it’s around that.

CRAWFORD: After you finished the postdoc at Oklahoma State, did you come here to Kent directly?

TAHERI: Again, it was a very weird story. I was there, and then I got a call, and they said, “This guy Bill Doane called you.” I picked up the phone there, and he says, “I’m Bill Doane. I want to see if you want to come to the Liquid Crystal Institute and do a postdoc for me.” I said, “I don’t know anything about liquid crystals.” He said, “That’s okay. I’ll teach you.” I said, “Okay.” [laughs] I said, “Okay, let me think about it.” He was actually going to surgery. He called me from before just going to surgery. He’s a unique guy. He is in a different world by himself. [inaudible]. Going to surgery, who would think of something like this? But anyway, he called me before he went to surgery. He goes, “Yeah, I’m going to go to surgery. I’ll give you a call when I come out, a week from now,” or something like that. Then I went and talked to the lady who was running—the director. She was a Korean named Jin-Joo Song, very famous person at the time. I talked to some other people. I said, “I don’t know liquid crystals.” They said, “Who was it?” I said, “Bill Doane. Some guy named Bill Doane.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: And they're like, “Like Bill Doane? From—?” I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “You should go!” [laughs] [inaudible]. So, I came. I don’t exactly know how he found out, but maybe someone from Oklahoma went before, there was a guy here before maybe, and he said—Bill was looking for someone, and he suggested me.

CRAWFORD: You don’t know how Bill Doane found out, but what did he want you to do? Why was he interested in you?

TAHERI: He wanted me to understand the optics of cholesteric liquid crystals. I assume there must have been a postdoc before, before me or something, that I must have been friends with, and at some point says, “Yeah, Bahman might be a good substitute.” I assume. But that’s not the point. The point is that he’s thinking of bringing people who he wants. He’s just in a different league. What an amazing person!

CRAWFORD: This was ’94, ’95?

TAHERI: ’95, I think.

CRAWFORD: Shortly after you finished your PhD in ’94.

TAHERI: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: It sounds like you didn’t really know who Doane was. Did you know anything about the Liquid Crystal Institute?

TAHERI: Nothing. I didn’t know anything.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: They didn’t have Google back then. [laughs]

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Right, right.

TAHERI: They were just beginning to look at Netscape. [laughs] No, I didn’t know. I came here, and I visited, and I liked it. What was funny, and this could have been part of it, was Bill Doane, before he came to Kent, I’m sure he told you, but he almost accepted a job at Oklahoma State. That was his second choice. So I think because I was probably from Oklahoma State, he was okay with it somehow. I think that might have been some aspect of it. But yeah, I came here, and he gave me Peter Collings’s book, which was Introduction to Liquid Crystals, without equations [laughs]. Like, for dummies—“liquid crystals for dummies.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: And I read that.

CRAWFORD: You said you came out and visited and you liked what you saw. What was it that attracted you to the LCI?

TAHERI: The greenery—

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: And the—well, Oklahoma doesn't have a lot. And, there was just—it was a positive feel there, when Bill was running it. It was in the basement. It was just you could feel the energy, of science. You could feel it.

CRAWFORD: I wonder if you could say a little bit more. What does it mean to feel the energy of science?

TAHERI: First of all, you would go in there, and the offices were all aligned in this hallway, so you could walk in and you could see the professors there. Then you could see the labs there, sitting there. They're all working on the same type of thing—liquid crystals. When you walked by, people were friendly—“Hi. How are you doing?” You could see everybody. Now, in a laser lab, when you're there, you're working in isolation. Also, because the place was so big, you would have to make a point of seeing someone to see them. You have to actually plan to see them. But when we came here, you almost run into people. So to me, as I was walking and I saw their labs, and they were doing cool stuff—liquid crystals is incredibly unique among any other material that you find. Which is why I fell in love with it. And that is that, with liquid crystals, you can actually make a device. You, as a graduate student, you can make a device. You can’t do that with nonlinear optics. You can’t do that with optical computing. You are making a part that may be in something, can be potentially there. But here you come, you put something in there, and you can actually make it work. You don’t need a secondary guy to grow a crystal for you. You don’t need another guy to give—you know what I mean? You can do it yourself. Very seldom materials are like that. And liquid crystals can do that. And they do.

CRAWFORD: It sounds like in part the more communal feel of the LCI—

TAHERI: Absolutely.

CRAWFORD: —was—I was going to ask you about this earlier, because you mentioned when you’re working with lasers, you're working at night, there’s probably not a lot of people around. [laughs] Was that difficult at all?

TAHERI: No, because you're so focused. The social aspect doesn't come into it. You're really focused. It was actually good. During the day, you can socialize.

CRAWFORD: What was it like when you came to Kent and you accepted the position?

TAHERI: It was very good. Bill gave me quite a bit of freedom. That’s where I met—obviously very early on I met Peter. Then I met—Oleg was working on something, and Oleg, for example, knew another guy that I worked with. I worked with him at Oklahoma. A famous guy. These are famous guys. That he had come to Oklahoma, and was working on this stuff, and I said, “Oh, yeah, I know him.” Like Nicolai Kotorev [sp], he’d go, “Oh yeah, I know that guy!” And the guy is writing books. I mean, these are—these guys. So it was interactions like that, that was good. Deng-Ke Yang—unbelievable. A lot of cool people. They enjoyed science. They talked about science. Talked about weird stuff in science. “Oh, what do you think of this?” So it was really good. Very good.

CRAWFORD: It sounds like, too, that the LCI created the opportunities for people have those discussions, through the physical layout, and—

TAHERI: And I always tell this—that analogy of it would be like Xerox Park. Where there were tons of ideas floating around. You just had to go cherry-pick what you wanted, and see if you can kind of go through that. Bill Doane created that. That atmosphere.

CRAWFORD: In addition to Doane’s influence, and several other people that I’ve spoken to have basically said the same thing, what is it that you think creates that environment? Because there are some—you must know this, as being the CEO of a company—there are some environments that are conducive to creativity and innovation and scientific exchange, and other environments that are not.

TAHERI: They're not. They're not. I think that comes from the top. That comes from the top. We have a pretty innovative system. You saw it. Partly it’s the building, too. I know it sounds weird. But when we designed this, if you notice, the coffee shop was in the middle. That was on purpose. Actually my roommate in college is an architect who designed this for me. But basically, I wanted that concept—that during the day, if you're sitting out there just having coffee, you will see everybody. You will always—there’s no way that you can just hide in this building. The bathroom, or your coffee, or whatever it is, there is a central location. I think it’s interaction. If you put people in their little towers of their own individuality, of course it looks cool, to have my own lab in the middle of nowhere or whatever, but I think the knowledge of interaction is the most important thing. That’s my own opinion.

CRAWFORD: In designing this building—just to say for the recording, we're in AlphaMicron right now, which as you explained used to be an old bus depot for Kent State, and so you were essentially given what sounds like it must have been basically a large warehouse—

TAHERI: Yep.

CRAWFORD: —and you could just design the space in any way that you wanted.

TAHERI: Yeah. And you can see, like my friend that designed it said that basically it’s like a couple of highways, big wide highways, with some buildings, some structures, and the central—the space in the middle is so big that we put a pickleball court in there.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] I noticed that.

TAHERI: We used to play pickleball in the middle, so people can come in there, in that sense, and play in that. During COVID, that’s all we did. But again, it’s a community that sits and interacts.

CRAWFORD: I know you mentioned that you had a friend who was an architect who helped design the space. Did you have any other scientific institutions in mind, or spaces in mind?

TAHERI: No, no, it wasn’t a scientific institution, but what it was is that, in here obviously we have quite a number of scientists. We have a bunch of them. And they're all, in my opinion, they're superb. I mean, they're really, really good scientists. A couple of other things that we did—one is, we don’t have a lot of hierarchy in this place. The notion is, there is a centralized goal. I think that makes a huge difference. When Doane was there, he diverted a goal. It doesn't matter what the goal is, what—the goal was cholesteric liquid crystals. So everything you did, the money that was bringing in, had cholesteric liquid crystals. Of course your knowledge goes up, and then like I said, you can always translate it to something else. But everyone was working on it. So when you walked around, everybody had something to do with that. Now, you have a team working on one topic, rather than “I’m working on nuclear physics,” “I’m working on”—I don’t know, antigravity boots or whatever thing there can be. So both spatially, you're forcing an interaction, and intellectually you're forcing an interaction. You force it. In this company we're working at, we're working on guest-host displays, or guest-host liquid crystals. So if you would come and tell me, “Hey, I’d like to make”—I don’t know—“balloons [inaudible], I’d say, “It’s kind of cool. But that’s separate. Do that on the weekend.” But on this thing. And then you eliminate the conversations. Then there’s a couple of other things. Once you have that goal, you set a goal of “you have to achieve this,” then everything becomes noise that is not there. You don’t discuss ideas; you discuss projects. Then it’s not mine against yours or against his. The egos go away. Because you say, “These are all clever. Everyone’s clever. Everyone’s great. The question is, which one will help us move toward that goal?” That eliminates some of the unnecessary chatter.

CRAWFORD: It sounds like a way to foster collaboration.

TAHERI: Absolutely, absolutely. Again, it’s something that I’ve learned obviously from all my professors that I’ve worked for. It’s not a brilliant idea; I learned that from different things. But you can see that today, AlphaMicron, as I told you, we're this little company in the middle of Kent, Ohio, but we're working with all the major West Coast things, with different branches of the government that are coming in there. It points to the success of that strategy. Which again, I learned from the geniuses that were there before me.

CRAWFORD: This might be a good opportunity to ask another question that came out of this 2021 interview that you did with Information Displays. The interviewer [laughs] described AlphaMicron—and these are his words—quote—“as being unusual, because it is a successful U.S. company that makes products based on liquid crystal technology.” Would you agree with that assessment?

TAHERI: That’s 100% correct.

CRAWFORD: Why did the interviewer say that? Why characterize it—?

TAHERI: Because if you look at liquid crystal industry, it’s all in the Pacific Rim. They're all there. There’s only a few companies that are making products based on liquid crystal. Which is amazing, right? It was invented here, and now we're barely surviving there. The industrial base for liquid crystal is next to none.

CRAWFORD: There’s a lot of scientific work in liquid crystals going on in the U.S. but the industrial base is in the Pacific Rim?

TAHERI: Industrial base is there. Again, China, the number of people, and all of the stuff that they have, the technology also there—there’s a huge amount of technology there. Samsung, LG, Sony, BOE, all of these things—the liquid crystal companies—Merck, DIC—they're all there. So it is unusual for a company, whether it’s KDI, whether it’s us, or whatever, to be able to create something that others cannot just copy the next day.

CRAWFORD: We were talking about how you got started at the LCI, came there in 1995. AlphaMicron was founded in 1997, so I wonder if you could talk about, where did AlphaMicron come from?

TAHERI: I was the industrial liaison at the time, and the Air Force came and said, “We need this technology. We need a new technology. That has x, y, and z. It can’t be glass. It can’t be polarizer based. It has to have a good clear state. It has to be for some protection.” Of course, whenever someone says, “We need a new technology” or new idea or new things, every physicist in the world will say, “Oh, I want to get on it.” That’s just our insecurities. What they wanted, it was at a company level. So, we opened up this company, SBIR. Initially, Peter and I were going to do it. But we brought in—because Peter wanted to still have quite a lot in the university level, so Tamas got involved, too. Then we wrote the proposal and we moved forward with it. Then, we were in a dump. It was a garage. Then we kind of built it up, slowly hired people. Then at some point we realized we needed chemistry, so we had hired chemists. Then we said, “We need a clean room,” and then—I mean just kind of built up on that.

CRAWFORD: So, Peter Palffy, Tamas—

TAHERI: Kosa. K-O-S-A.

CRAWFORD: K-O-S-A. So the Air Force came to the LCI?

TAHERI: Mmhmm.

CRAWFORD: You said you were working as the industrial liaison. What was that role?

TAHERI: At some point, Doane had an advanced liquid crystal and optical materials center. As part of that center, he had an industrial partnership program. In that industrial partnership program, he appointed me as the liaison. That means that a lot of these companies that would come in to interact with the Liquid Crystal Institute, I would be working with them, to see what can we do, how can we help them, and then based on that, move forward. Now, this one, it was a little bit tricky, because Air Force, they didn’t want a university research. They have the university research. They wanted to actually create something. The guy proposed a program that the government has been doing, it’s called SBIR—Small Business Innovative Research—and he said, “Why don’t you do it that way, so that you can create this business?” That’s what we did. Then I thought, “Oh, that’s a good idea. I’m going to start doing that.” So we started Phase 1. We got the Phase 1. Then we went to Phase 2. Then I went full bore on it.

CRAWFORD: I know a few years before AlphaMicron, so I think in 1993 was when—it wasn’t called Kent Displays at the time, but Doane founded—did he help you out as well?

TAHERI: No, no, no, no. When he moved to that place, no, I stayed at the LCI. I was with John West. I was John’s—in his lab. I was running his lab, and I was also industrial liaison, in that sense. But of course, I would talk to Bill, and he encouraged it.

CRAWFORD: How did you end up as industrial liaison? Was that something you were interested in doing?

TAHERI: No? I don’t know? I was working on optics of liquid crystals, and I would go around with Bill and work on some of the stuff. Bill just noticed it, I don’t know, because people would come in and—I think maybe my experience at Oklahoma, to be able to kind of move between different projects and look at multiple projects, made him think that maybe it’s viable. Because I wasn’t just a liquid crystal person. But it was Bill’s decision, and Bill said, “I want you to do this,” and I said, “Okay.”

CRAWFORD: Up until this point it sounds like you had a pretty standard academic career—grad school, and now you're doing postdocs. Did you ever think about going into academia?

TAHERI: Yes and no. At the time, when we were looking at these things, I did, for a little bit. But to be honest, it wasn’t quite there. I liked making, the aspects of it. So in a way, no, I liked a little bit doing my own. And actually when I was a grad student, I did open up a company, and I was helping with the lasers, moving back and forth, creating some laser stuff.

CRAWFORD: Really!

TAHERI: Yeah.

CRAWFORD: Could you just talk a little bit more about that?

TAHERI: When you want to get lasers—at that point, people were interested in buying lasers, like Mexico, others. Then they needed—when you call a laser company, they're going to sell you laser that they have. So they needed somebody to tell them, “Is this the one you want? Which one is the good brand?” I was able to kind of consult with that.

CRAWFORD: Wow.

TAHERI: I think, like you said, maybe my father’s past experiences, I kind of liked that more than—academia was very good with Bill, and John was also really nice and everything, so that wasn’t ever a problem on this side. It’s just that academia can become more of an individualistic thing.

CRAWFORD: You saw going into industry or starting a company as perhaps maybe a better way to continue this kind of collaborative environment that you saw at the LCI?

TAHERI: Yes.

CRAWFORD: You've talked a little bit about how the Air Force sort of came with this project, or this product, or a specific goal in mind. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what AlphaMicron developed, and what it is making.

TAHERI: We started to look for what technology would work. At the time, I was happy to explore other things. It didn’t have to be liquid crystals. Electrochromics, or whatever. We were looking at different things. And it looked like the only thing that showed the greatest promise was these guest-host liquid crystals. Now, people had done it. People had worked on guest-host liquid crystals. I think it was one of the first ones that was created, way back. But not for this application. So there was a lot of things that were in a different direction. Again, I always asked—because again, it goes back to this thing—“I’m sure other people have thought about this.” So I have to ask, “Why isn’t it there? Why aren’t they making the guest-host liquid crystals?” It turned out, it was a pretty logical reason. The logical reason was that, first, the industry wasn’t that big, to make a switchable thing. Eyewear is more of a cosmetic thing, if you wish. But also, the guest-hosts that we were doing, they were using guest-hosts so that, for example, a pilot and a copilot see the same color. Because back then, with a polarizer, you could get weird liquid crystal effects. You can get color inversions and stuff like that. But this one, it doesn't. So the goal was always to just make sure that two people see the same color. Now, how they switch it, how dark it is, or how wide of a window, wasn’t the big point. The market wasn’t there. So now we're trying to create this, where the requirements are different. They're saying, “I don’t care how dark the dark state is. I want to know how clear the clear state can be. I don’t care how glass is. I want to do it on plastic.” That told me that it’s unique. Then the second thing is, of course, I saw the Air Force was doing AR, augmented reality. I said, “That’s going to be the future. And if it’s the future, they're going to need this. They're going to need some technologies there.” So it made sense. Of course there were a lot of issues that we didn’t know, at the time, but it made total sense to me. It was just a matter of time that they would want it.

CRAWFORD: I wonder if you could explain again, just for the recording here, what is a guest-host liquid crystal?

TAHERI: Typically the way the liquid crystal works is that the material, the liquid crystal itself, it changes the polarization of light. It’s like an electronic wave guide. It’s like an electronic wave plate; I’m sorry. In its simplest case, in [inaudible] limit or whatever, you can imagine it that the liquid crystal can wave-guide a particular polarization to come out a different direction. So all it’s doing, it’s manipulating the different polarizations of the light, because it alters the speed that a particular wavelength propagates through it. So it is only playing around with that phase of the light that comes in and out. Now, based on that, then they put polarizers on the outside surfaces, and the absorption is done by the polarizers. The liquid crystal is merely changing the phase or changing the polarization state of the light going through it, depending on the electric field. With the guest-host, what we're doing is saying, “Forget about the polarizers. We're going to—” On its simplest way, imagine crushing all the polarizers into little molecules and just throwing it into the liquid crystal itself. Now, in that sense, your liquid crystal goes from the functionality of altering the polarization of the light to reorienting a host, a guest in there, the dye. So the liquid crystal becomes a host to a guest dye. Then when you reorient the liquid crystal, then you are reorienting the dye. So it’s the dye that does all the absorption. In fact, ideal case is you don’t want the liquid crystal to play around with polarization at all. Just rotate the dye for me. And the dye becomes the absorber. Now, the guest-host type of system, which is this whole notion of adding a guest to a liquid crystal, is obviously very broad. Depending on what you put in there, it can be positive, negative. It can be normally black, normally dark, normally clear, normally whatever, all of these different things. So the configurations—there are a lot of configurations. Then finding the right one of the liquid crystal, with the right material, with the right dye, with the right configuration is very difficult.

CRAWFORD: Is that a lot of the work that you do, then?

TAHERI: Yes.

CRAWFORD: When you gave me the tour, you talked about dyes that you are developing—

TAHERI: Yeah. What we ended up doing is we created—as I told you earlier, that liquid crystals are something that you can actually make the part yourself; you don’t have to go out too far. So we started to look at liquid crystal configurations, bought what dyes were out there in the consumer market, from Merck and all these, Mitsubishi and whatever, and we tested them, and they just didn’t have the performance. Then we said, “Oh, okay. Well, we may need to get our own dyes.” So we started getting our own dyes. But liquid crystals are – you take the mixtures which are very complicated. That’s why even Samsung and LG still buy their liquid crystal from Merck. It’s not just that concept. So you have to have the right formulations and stuff. We spent quite a lot of time creating that formulation, and that formulation is very much a Dysonian. You have to literally test ten thousand different things to find the right one. Which is what we did. So we did that. Then we made the first ones. Then you have to go from—they want it to be on glass—I’m sorry, it was usually on glass; they wanted it to be on plastic—so suddenly, when we go over there to, let’s say Taiwan or China or whatever, said, “Can you make this?” They said, “No, we only make it on glass.” So now we have to learn how to make it on plastic. But first, plastic has to have ITO and all this stuff. So the technology was evolving with us, and we were using whatever we could find, and we would create these liquid crystal systems around that.

CRAWFORD: What are some of the products that AlphaMicron has? I know a lot of them are for military applications. Your website talks a lot about like e-Tint, for example. I don’t know if you want to talk about that?

TAHERI: Yeah. We initially started to work on a way of controlling the ambient light, light that comes into your eye. That’s really what it’s supposed to do. At the end of the day, we want to make a film that changes its transmission with the application of voltage. Now, where can you use this? The obvious ones are a near-eye application. You can think about sunglasses. We ended up doing that for the Army, so that we could attach it to a ballistic lens, so now a soldier can go in and out of a building without having to replace that lens. There’s electronic tint on the map. It’s like a photochromic, except with a voltage, you switch it. That’s one. Then, we started looking at application for automotive, whether it’s auto-dimming mirror in the cars. Now, sunroofs are becoming interesting, to be able to switch it. Windows in buildings, to be able to electronically control that. And other aspects of a film that you can literally apply a small voltage and have it. Because it’s a liquid crystal, the power consumption is really low, so you can drive it with very low batteries. Then, all of these things with augmented reality, that is coming up with companies on the West Coast that are creating it—those companies, at the end of the day, they're hitting the same problems that the Air Force did. Then our product becomes desirable and needed for that system. Now, we're working with those entities as well as some other ones.

CRAWFORD: Are these the kind of systems where you apply an electric charge and it will go dark? It’s not continuously using electricity?

TAHERI: No, no, no, it is. In fact, when you apply voltage, you reorient the liquid crystals, and it gets dark. Or, the other way; you can make it so it’s dark, and then you apply voltage and it goes clear. But once you remove the voltage, then the surfaces bring you back to the original state. And the interesting thing is, in fact, you have to have that for a lot of these applications, because they call that failsafe. If you had a bistable one, where you apply it and it gets dark, and the electrical system goes off, then you had a dark glass. And they don’t want that. Because in a situation where there’s military, or motorcycle, or whatever application—you're riding—you want, if there’s a catastrophic failure, for the system to go to the clear state automatically as soon as it can. They call that failsafe. Liquid crystals can provide you that.

CRAWFORD: I think that’s part of what I was asking, essentially whether it was a bistable system or not.

TAHERI: Right, right.

CRAWFORD: Again I noticed on your website that in 2019, e-Tint was a finalist for the Prism Award from the Society for Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers.

TAHERI: Yes.

CRAWFORD: I wonder if you could first talk a little bit about what this award is, and what it means in your discipline.

TAHERI: Over the years, we've won a lot of awards. A lot of awards. Now, what do they really mean? I don’t know. I don’t think they mean that much more than—I think at the end of the day, if the product is worn by people, and it satisfies the thing, I think that’s the real award. But, because we're somewhat unique, we were awarded things, and we're unique in the sense that we're a liquid crystal company in Kent, and this thing. In fact I just came back, and a few weeks ago we got an award there. We didn’t even apply for—a lot of these, we didn’t apply for it. So, what is it? It does validate that the technology is something that, somewhat similar to a peer-reviewed paper, that there is people thinking that it’s new and novel. But, I don’t know if it’s any different than having 90 patents on it, and whatever it is, which we do have. I think the award is just a recognition, as I see it, for the work that some of these people at the company have done. But I think they get more satisfaction if they see it on the eyes of an Army soldier [laughs], to be perfectly honest with you, or if they see it in a mirror in a car, and they’re like, “That’s my technology.” I think that’s probably a little bit better.

CRAWFORD: It sounds like AlphaMicron was started in response to essentially a request from the Air Force. I know that a few years ago in 2018, you got this Flash and Laser Airborne Protection Systems grant, also from the Air Force.

TAHERI: Yep.

CRAWFORD: So you've done a lot of work with the military. It sounds like you guys are also working with NASA at this point?

TAHERI: Not so much. We had a grant with NASA, but not so much with NASA.

CRAWFORD: But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what it’s like at that kind of interface between industry and military? Are there any particular opportunities that it presents or particular challenges?

TAHERI: There’s always positives and negatives with everything. First of all, what it presented to us was what is the pinnacle of research. That means, we’re not engaged in research that gets published so much, but we are engaged in trying to address very specific problems that the government has, or the entities have. By definition, that means the problem is not solved. When it’s not solved, it’s fun. So we're not improving it; we're trying to—it’s not an evolutionary change a lot of times—it’s more of a revolutionary change. And that’s exciting. Government are okay with supporting a company, even though potentially they're not going to see a return on their investment within six months. It’s not a quarterly-based report of the stock market to their shareholders, so they can invest on long-term ideas. That’s fantastic. The downside is it’s a big bureaucracy. For you to submit a proposal is hard, and you are competing with a lot of much better funded, much better organized entities. In some of these programs, it’s AlphaMicron versus, I don’t know, you name some company—Boeing. Like, really? It’s like, our company against Lockheed Martin. I mean, are you kidding? [laughs] They are probably in their janitorial staff more than what we have as a whole company.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: That’s a complexity, that structure.

CRAWFORD: How do you, as a smaller company—first of all, I’d like to know just how big is the company at this point—but how do you navigate that bureaucracy? When you write a grant, or a proposal?

TAHERI: We're about 45 people altogether right now. The statement I said—at bigger companies, these are like freight trains; they're going around which you can’t stop in front of them. But they can’t stop, and they can’t turn. We're nimble, and we've been able to carve a niche in what we can do and what we were able. At this particular moment in the history of the world that sits there, this particular thing that we have is considered very valuable to them. Now, maybe it wasn’t 20 years ago. Maybe in 20 years from now, they don’t care. But at this particular moment, it is. I think what we have to do is—we have to write a significant amount of proposals and find out where it goes, and this thing. But again, at this particular moment, we've become a known entity, so we have the reputation that is needed to get the grants. If we say we're going to do something, we will definitely do it. We deliver. We deliver deliverables. Typically, we underpromise, overdeliver. That’s just one of the things we've always done. We try, the best we can.

CRAWFORD: At this point a lot of it has to do with your reputation in terms of—

TAHERI: It is. Reputation of AlphaMicron—

CRAWFORD: —work that you've done in the past.

TAHERI: —it’s currently known as an entity that—that does it.

CRAWFORD: Based on what you said, it sounds like you've done a lot of work with the Air Force, but you also work with other companies?

TAHERI: We do. Most of our funds came from interactions with larger companies. The team here, obviously they have become experts at particular light management, electro-optic new light management technology. Not just the military but some of the bigger companies—one of the products that we had was for KLA-Tencor. KLA-Tencor makes inspection tools for Intel, and they needed a way so that they can inspect the wafer with a laser, and they needed—the patterns that were coming, scattering; they wanted to eliminate the scatter. Well, how are they going to do that? They can hire people and invest and figure out how to create that. Or, they can come to us. As you saw, we're kind of a one-stop shop. We start all the way from chemistry to the packing that goes into it, and we deliver it to them. At the end, it’s cheaper for them.

CRAWFORD: It sounds like over time, the company has built up an expertise in what you call light management, essentially.

TAHERI: Absolutely.

CRAWFORD: These different applications.

TAHERI: Absolutely. I think you noticed that probably on your website, we don’t have marketing.

CRAWFORD: That’s what I was going to say. It doesn't sound like you're—whereas, as we talked about, like Kent Displays has their product that they're actually selling, they're marketing and they're selling it on Amazon.

TAHERI: They have a sales force. [laughs] We don’t have a sales force. [laughs] Typically, people who come to us know what they're looking for. They find us. We don’t find them.

CRAWFORD: Have you ever considered—?

TAHERI: No. Not right now. At some point, we will. But at this particular moment, again, in the history of this particular product, we're inundated with projects. In fact, a lot of times we tell people we can’t do it right now.

CRAWFORD: You're finding enough requests.

TAHERI: At this particular moment, yes.

CRAWFORD: Thinking about being a tech company here in northeast Ohio, there are some other companies around and there’s the Liquid Crystal Institute and stuff, but there’s also other places like Route 128 corridor outside of Boston or Cambridge, or of course Silicon Valley. I’m just curious, what is it like running a technology company in northeast Ohio? Are there particular advantages, particular challenges?

TAHERI: I can tell you the challenges right away. The challenges is that it’s hard to recruit. A lot of people—not because Ohio is any different than the other ones, but people want to come to a place that, if they lose their job, then they can go across the street, find another one. That’s a huge challenge. Northeast Ohio is great. It is pretty open. I personally haven't felt any kind of biases or anything like that. That means it’s very welcoming. It’s a tough place. I mean, they want you to do what you have to do. They're not going to sugar-coat anything on that. But at the same time, they're not going to deprive you of any opportunities. I think in that sense, it’s a fantastic place. Of course, we've been here for 25 years, so—so we like it. Opportunities is that, well, reality is that the fact that in some way positives and negatives go together, right? Of course, everyone says, “Oh, you're a small company in Kent, Ohio.” Middle of nowhere. But the fact is, we're a company in Kent, Ohio, so there is notice there. But if I say, “I am one of the 10,000 startups with a VC in Silicon Valley,” they're like, “Okay. Next.”

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Right. It distinguishes the company.

TAHERI: It does. It distinguishes us. And the cost of living is lower, so your needs to run and sustain a company is more manageable. We don’t have VCs. We have nothing. There are no outside investors.

CRAWFORD: Am I correct that you're suggesting that that is perhaps a benefit or an advantage?

TAHERI: Absolutely. Because if you don’t have outside investors, they're not—I can tell you that if we had gone after VCs, the company wouldn't be here today. Because they want to exit. Everyone you talk to will say, “Oh, this is great. What’s your exit strategy?”

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: “Okay, I’m not exiting from anything. I’m doing what I’m doing.” So they're not going to want to do that. Here, we have the ability to not discuss that.

CRAWFORD: Obviously you guys are working in liquid crystals. The LCI or the AMLCI is almost literally right down the street. Do you guys collaborate with the LCI?

TAHERI: Oh, yeah, a lot. When we submit proposals, there are things that we would just subcontract to Kent. I work quite a lot with Peter. I work with Hiroshi. We work with the Chemistry Department. Bob Twieg. Absolutely. We work now with other universities. We work with Bowling Green. We work with Miami of Ohio. You didn’t see this thing, but we are true believer that if you can buy something, don’t design it. So, there are actually very close collaborations.

CRAWFORD: As a bigger question, based on that experience, what are your thoughts on the relationship between academia and industry? Are there any friction points?

TAHERI: Generally, or with Kent?

CRAWFORD: Either one.

TAHERI: Generally, being on both sides of this aisle, I think that the assumption made by the universities is not maybe the most helpful. For example, a lot of times the universities are always looking for that Gatorade. “Oh, boy. I want that Gatorade.” But that doesn't happen. I mean, they want to license, okay? But that doesn't go too far. On the other hand, if you look at a small company like ours, working with Kent—we get grants, because we actually provide a product, whether it’s government or other companies. Then we turn around and we subcontract some of that to the university. The funding that they get—or I can tell you, the funding that Kent got from us, as a collaborative one—far, far outweighs what they got from—we did one licensing way back—but what they got from licensing. It’s not even in the same ballpark. What does that mean? That means that the universities are not aware of where they bring value. I bring this up a lot, that even if you want to think about all the licensing and stuff, then universities such as Kent or other ones are going to have a hard time competing with MITs and Harvards of the world, where they have so much equipment. Like I told you, equipment is a lot, so they're going to have a hard time. So they need to have a new business strategy, and this business strategy of being a subcontractor in my opinion is far more lucrative than running for a Gatorade.

CRAWFORD: I know you were talking about universities in general but also Kent in particular. Is your sense that Kent State is maybe starting to understand the value of this subcontracting, or are they still thinking in terms of licensing?

TAHERI: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think they are quite there yet. Because you're going to need—a top-down approach has to be there. The lawyers in there have to understand. When you have too many people in the room making decisions, it’s not going to happen. Because everyone is going to look at it. You're going to need someone to come and say, “From today, we're doing this.” And have the ability to—just like everything else I’m telling you—put a goal there, and force people to that goal. Otherwise people will all go to their corners. The lawyer says, “Well, yeah, but oh my god, what if this happens? Then we're screwed. So I’m going to protect myself in that.” Then the technology office is going to say, “Oh, what happens if that? If it’s Gatorade, then I gave it away, and everyone is going to complain to me.” But someone has to take that responsibility, and that responsibility needs to come from the top.

CRAWFORD: You used to be the industrial partnership liaison. Did Kent State learn anything from that experience? Because that’s a big part of what ALCOM was about, right, was—

TAHERI: Yeah. But it’s gone right now. It didn’t go that much more. One of the things that Doane did was exactly what I just said. Doane would send me, and I would go and I would do what was necessary. He wasn’t looking at, “Okay, can I get a patent on it?” We would just make the thing. Because if it was good, then those industrial partnership programs would then turn around and give money to be members, and then we would create the value by making them like newspaper stuff, or magazine stuff. Or we say, “Hey, if we create a patent, or if we create this thing, if you're a member, you have access to it. We're not negotiating with you, and you, and then they negotiate. No, this is it. But if you don’t, then you don’t have access to it. So it’s better for you to just give the $10,000 a year, be a member, and potentially something comes. If it doesn't, it doesn't.” But the industry based aspect to create the pull is important. Because there’s a push and a pull, obviously, right? A lot of the stuff that being in universities is a push type of system. You want the industry to pull it. I believe in the pull. That’s why when the Air Force said it, we created it, because there was a pull. The Air Force said, “I want it,” so we created that.

CRAWFORD: It’s a different approach than, say, coming up with a product and then trying to create a market for it or something.

TAHERI: Yeah. And you don’t fall in love with your own idea.

CRAWFORD: [laughs] Right, right. I know we're getting close to the end of our time here, so again, I just wanted to ask some bigger questions. Thinking about your career in optical physics, and now working in liquid crystals and so forth, over the course of your career, what would you see as some of the key developments in the fields that you're involved in, either in terms of research or innovation?

TAHERI: What do I see in the field of liquid crystal and—

CRAWFORD: —and, say, optical physics.

TAHERI: Optical physics, by far one of the most important things was this invention of the blue laser. The guy got a Nobel Prize and I think rightfully so. And, by the way [laughs] I still—to be honest, I am still flabbergasted at the fact that they can make lasers with hundred kilowatts of juice. When we were young, when I was working on this thing, people would make these statements—“Oh, we're going to aim to get to this number”—and I said, “[laughs] Good luck with that.” And here they are doing it. So unbelievable. Optically, I think it’s flabbergasting I would say. In terms of the liquid crystal, really if you see how it evolved, from when it first started to when the displays came, it was fantastic. It just went there. It was this thing. To be honest, over the past 10 years, I don’t think there is a lot that changed. Because people were stuck on that display. “Look at the market. It’s a $100 billion industry.” Yeah, [laughs] it is a $100 billion industry, but now I can buy this thing for $300.” Probably your prescription glasses cost that much. So it’s just a piece of plastic. So it has become commoditized, and they didn’t push onto this other one. Today, in terms of liquid crystals, I think the guest-host has become a venue for the future. Of course, we're there, but I’m sure others are going to be here, and they will potentially surpass it. As soon as panels run out, I’m sure they will surpass us [snaps] just like that. But I genuinely believe that there is sustainable future for liquid crystals in the guest-host arena.

CRAWFORD: Why do you think that?

TAHERI: For the same reason we started in it. You can adjust the performance. You can go more clear or more dark. But it still has the liquid crystal properties of being fast and being low power consumption. Now with the invent of plastic, you can start putting it in there. You're taking the positives of the liquid crystal, you're applying it outside of the display world. Of course we're in it so you think it’s great, but I think that beyond us, beyond AlphaMicron, it’s going to grow a lot more. It’s going to grow. Because of our interaction with the government, we saw it first. But now that people are seeing it, I think it is going to be huge.

CRAWFORD: In addition to further development of guest-host liquid crystals, are there other directions that you see the field going, or innovation going?

TAHERI: I think the polymeric material is going to be very interesting. It is in its infancy as I see it right now. There isn’t a killer app for it yet. Because everything has to do with a killer app, right? Again, the reason I was talking about guest-host is because there are apps, whether it’s augmented reality or windows or whatever. The polymer is still not there yet. Polymer is an answer that still is begging the question, right? But it can do some seriously cool stuff. I think that using polymer for—like what Peter does, where you can kind of manipulate it—can it be in a biological system? Can it become there? Yes. I think that could be there. Now, is it something that will happen over the next 10, 20 years? I don’t believe so. But I think it’s a very cool field, and I think some people are doing some seriously nice work on it. Nick Abbott is doing some stuff. Peter is doing some stuff. I think some of this stuff—I don’t know enough, so I’m not going to—I’m sure the names are a lot more than that; I just don’t—it’s not in my field, so I don’t know enough about it.

CRAWFORD: One question I always like to ask in these interviews—given that it sounds like you've had some important mentors in your life that really helped guide you, if you were talking to a younger person today, say an undergraduate, somebody who is considering a career in, whether it’s liquid crystals specifically or just materials science, or physics, and at this interface between research and innovation, what advice would you give to that person?

TAHERI: Wow, that became suddenly hard.

CRAWFORD: [laughs]

TAHERI: I would say, be open to ideas. Make sure you don’t anchor. And I would always say that you have to let—like I said, maybe the pull is an important aspect of it. That means that, know where it’s going. Make sure you don’t fall in love with that idea. I would always go back to the thing I learned, again because of my mentors or whatever, is that—asking the right question. The question is not, “Hey, I came up with something brand new.” You have to ask that question like I said before to you, in the sense that, “Why it is new? I’m sure someone else thought about it. But why?” I think probably there lies a gem that you might be able to build on.

CRAWFORD: Great. I don’t know if there’s anything else you’d like to share before we wrap up?

TAHERI: No. I think generally I would say that—one thing I tell everyone, and I’m a big advocate of it, is that there needs to be a lot of people from very different cultures to work on the same problem. Every time I have an interview with anyone, this is the one point I always keep leaving, and my point is very simple. I say, “If you have everyone who studied from the same book, given the problem, the answer is always going to be the same.” So I encourage everyone to work with a diverse group.

CRAWFORD: That seems like something that is reflected here at AlphaMicron.

TAHERI: Absolutely. We have people from a lot of different countries, with a lot of different backgrounds. And they look at the problem very differently. Each of them see it—whether it’s like a Korean style of making sure everything is precise, to different guys who want to see everything [inaudible] it’s very important.

CRAWFORD: I just wanted to thank you for your time, and for this interview. I very much appreciate it.

TAHERI: Sure! Absolutely!

[End]