Aaron Zilkie is Managing Partner and CTO of WeBridge Ventures, a venture platform and consulting company specializing in optics and photonics. Aaron was recently co-founder and CTO at Rockley Photonics. At Rockley, Aaron led the silicon photonic PIC platform development. He also led the R&D, technology strategy, and business development related to the PIC platform, covering a broad range of applications including consumer and medical device health monitoring, data communications transceivers, optical interconnects for AI, high performance computing, 3D imaging, and LiDAR. Prior to Rockley Photonics, he has held roles with Kotura Inc., where he developed silicon photonic hybrid lasers and QSFP optical transceivers, and with Oclaro Technology Inc. and Nortel Networks, where he developed fiber-optic communications system components and subsystem products. He has more than 50 granted patents and patent applications and authored or coauthored numerous journal articles in the field of photonics.
Aaron has a Ph.D. and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (Photonics) from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Manitoba.