LEONARD (LEN) REIFFEL - BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Len Reiffel has founded several high-tech companies. He currently heads two Chicago-based start-ups--Exelar Medical Corporation (www.exelarmedical.com) and Luxelar Corporation. His previous entrepreneurial activities have included both privately financed ventures as well as taking one of his companies (Interand Corp.) through the full gamut of development stages to a successful IPO and subsequent financings. That company's technology was ultimately bought by LG Electronics of Korea and presently provides key functionality for image handling on the Internet. During his time as CEO of Interand, Reiffel successfully led an effort to win the first major video terminal equipment procurement contract ever awarded competitively to an American firm by the giant NTT corporation of Japan. Reiffel is the inventor of several interactive graphics communications systems, including the well-known Telestrator (also sometimes called the TV Chalkboard) which today is used around the world by broadcasters, weathermen, producers of TV commercials and instructional television, and by network sports commentators such as John Madden, Mike Fratello and many others.
Len is a widely-recognized scientist, educator and technical administrator as well as an inventor/entrepreneur. He has served as a consultant to numerous high-tech companies in the US and abroad, the US Department of Defense, the Department of Energy (AEC) and NASA. As Deputy Director of NASA's Apollo Program Office (1965-1969), he was the Headquarters executive responsible for all manned lunar experiments and support equipment. He was also the NASA Headquarters person overseeing the lunar landing-site selection process, scientific aspects of astronaut activities, both in-flight and on the lunar surface, and matters of astronaut safety involving a science component such as solar-flare hazards, bio-contamination, lunar surface reactivity and many other such topics. Reiffel also served for several years as the Technical Director of the Interagency Manned Space Flight Experiments Board (NASA, DOD, USAF etc.).
In an unprecedented arrangement with the then administrator of NASA, Mr. James Webb, Dr. Reiffel, while carrying out his NASA responsibilities, concurrently was science consultant and on-air Science Commentator for the CBS Network.
Prior to joining NASA, Dr. Reiffel was Group Vice President of the IIT Research Institute, where he was a member of the Management Committee in addition to supervising a wide range of technical projects. He headed the Institute's activities in physics, fluid dynamics, space science and geophysics, while directing a staff of several hundred research scientists, engineers and support staff.
Reiffel has frequently worked closely with large and small technology companies in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Korea, either as a consultant or co-venturer.
On four occasions, Reiffel received the Industrial Research IR-1OO Award (now known as the R&D 100 Award) for the development of one of the 100 most outstanding technical products of the year. He has published many scientific papers in the fields of nuclear physics, fiber optics, electronics, video systems and space sciences and is the holder of approximately 50 patents.
For the past three years, development of his patented inventions in medical physics (Exelar Medical Corporation) has been supported by the National Medical Technology Testbed Program and pre-clinical testing is now underway in collaboration with Rush Medical Center. Reiffel's other startup (Luxelar Corporation) is developing an extensive series of Reiffel's inventions for enabling powerful new and very general ways for computer systems to deal efficiently with the visible world including the creation of "Attentive Spaces".
Reiffel worked extensively with the Walt Disney organization in conceptualizing and implementing electronic entertainment systems at Disney World's EPCOT Center and particularly for “The ImageWorks” in the $75 million Kodak Pavilion where millions of guests annually used equipment designed and developed by Reiffel and his associates.
Earlier in his career, Reiffel led a successful effort to create the world's first industrial nuclear reactor at Armour Research Foundation in Chicago. For many years, he was a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Advisory Committee on Isotopes and Radiation. He was also in charge of major multi-year projects sponsored by the United States Air Force and other agencies concerned with nuclear weapons testing and effects. Additionally, he was the Senior Consultant to the Republic of Korea regarding establishment of that country's nuclear energy research facilities and programs. In 1990, at the invitation of the governments of Belarus and Ukraine, Reiffel spent about a month evaluating the post-Chernobyl situation in those countries. During this time, he met with an extraordinary range of persons from Deputy Ministers to plant operators and peasants. He also had unfettered access to the accident site itself.
For many years, as an avocation, Dr. Reiffel regularly covered important events in science for CBS television and radio and was the featured personality on such long-running programs as “Dimensions on Tomorrow's Living”. His CBS TV series on science and technology, “Backyard Safari” was an Emmy nominee. He received the Aviation Writer's Association Award for outstanding coverage of events in space and is also the recipient of broadcasting's most coveted prize--the George Foster Peabody Award.
During almost a decade, over one thousand topics in science and technology were the subjects of Dr. Reiffel's by-lined columns “Science and You,” which were published in newspapers in the U.S. and abroad via World Book and The Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
Reiffel began his professional career at the Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago, where he worked in association with Professors H. L. Anderson and Enrico Fermi on the design of the 450 inch cyclotron which was constructed there. A Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of numerous other professional organizations, Reiffel is recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from his Alma Mater, the Illinois Institute of Technology and a variety of technical and entrepreneurial awards from various other organizations. He was inducted into the IIT Hall of Fame in 1984. He is currently a member of the Board of Overseers at Illinois Tech.
Reiffel received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is listed in Who's Who in America, American Men and Women of Science and various similar compilations.
