Team Members

A Collaborative & Diverse Group

Dr. Hamed Dalir

Chief Executive Officer / Co-Founder

Hamed Dalir is the Co-Founder and CEO of Optelligence Company. Dr. Dalir has succeeded in securing funding of more than $10 million series from private investors, as well as multiple grants from government agencies such as AFWERX, ARO, NSA, ONR and NASA via the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Dr. Dalir was a research associate at the University of California - Berkeley in 2016. Since then, he has been a senior research scientist with a tech start-up company located in Texas and secured more than $4 million as the Principal Investigator (PI) in funding from several SBIR/STTR projects supported by NASA, AFOSR, AFWERX, ARMY, NIST, and Broadcom Inc. He has received multiple awards, including the Yoshida Foundation Award for Development of Future Leaders for Changing Times and Young Scientist Award from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in 2009 and 2014, respectively. He is a senior member of the OSA, IEEE, and a committee/session chair of the SPIE. Dr. Dalir is the editor of: Photonics (MDPI) and Printed Electronics (Frontiers).

Dr. Volker J. Sorger

President / Co-Founder

Dr. Sorger has raised over $27 Million in competitive funding and invented more than 20 patents. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the director of the Information and Photonic AI Lab at George Washington University. For his work, Dr. Sorger received multiple awards including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the AFOSR Young Investigator Award (YIP), the Hegarty Innovation Prize, and the National Academy of Sciences award of the year. Dr. Sorger is an Associate editor for OPTICA and former Editor-in-Chief of Nanophotonics and serves on the boards of SPIE and OSA.

Dr. Mario Miscuglio

Chief Innovation Officer

Dr. Miscuglio is a research assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering department at the George Washington University. He received his Masters in Electric and Computer Engineering from Polytech of Turin, working as a researcher at Harvard/MIT.

Justin Fanelli

VP of Marketing and Business Development

Mr Justin Fanelli is also dthe Chief Architect of Defense Medical Intelligence Data and the Technical Director for Navy Manpower, Personnel, Training and Education (MPTE). Within Defense Healthcare, Mr Fanelli is leading the agency towards a one-stop data enterprise for revolutionized healthcare and research outcomes.

Dr. Elham Heidari

Sr. Research Scientist

Dr. Heidari received the M.Eng. in department of Electronics and Applied Physics, field of semiconductor nano-material from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan in 2014. She also received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Texas at, USA in 2020. Her research areas include scaling of silicon devices utilizing high-κ gate insulator metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect-transistors (MISFET), TCC VCSEL, opto-electronic devices, nanophotonics, fiber optics, novel 2D materials such as graphene and bio sensing. She received a grant from Optical Society of America (OSA) in 2018 for optical fiber conferences, and holds JASSO research excellence award ($5000).

Francisco Conti

Advisory Board Member

Current Advisory Board Memeber

Dr. Benito Fernandez

Advisory Board Member

Benito R. Fernández has a B.S., Chemical Engineering (1979) & Materials Engineering (1981), Universidad Simón Bolívar; M.S., Mechanical Engineering (1985) & Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering (1988), Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  30+ years academic experience at Universidad Simón Bolívar, Texas A&M University and The University of Texas at Austin.   5+ years of startup experience.Dr. Fernández has experience in a myriad of topics and comprehensive expertise, from robust-optimal nonlinear control, genetically evolving neuro-fuzzy networks, artificial immune systems, to advanced mechatronics, resilient firmware, modeling, diagnostics & prognosis of engineering systems, software engineering, chaotic hybrid encryption and cybersecurity.  He has a knack for research and innovation, using his multidisciplinary background, to bring innovative technologies and unseen ideas and products to market.  He is co-inventor in six patents, one pending, and more in development.

Dr. Alex Darvish

AI & Machine Learning Scientist

Dr. Davish has a MSc in Computer Engineering from the American University of Sharjah, MSc in Electrical Engineering University of Alabama in Huntsville and a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from University of Alabama at Birmingham. Mr. Darwish holds many awards including been awarded the lntelEdge Al Scholar-ship in 2019. He also has several publications ranging from Neural Networks to Cy-bersecurity.Mr. Darwish's experience makes him a perfect fit for the Al & Machine Learning Scientist at Optelligence LLC.

Joseph Crandall

Senior Software Engineer

Joseph Crandall’s data science and software engineering experience within the United States Department of Defense and Microsoft combined with his photonic computing research and exposure to data-intensive machine learning workflows within cleared environments have enabled him to contribute to the development of photonic application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to accelerate data processing and machine learning algorithms for commercial and governmental customers.