Board of Directors

Warren B.(Barry) Phelps, III was appointed Chair of the Board of Directors on July 16, 2024, has served as a member of our board of directors since 2017. Mr. Phelps serves as the chair of the Board’s Audit Committee and a member of the Board’s Compensation Committee. He has served as Executive Chair of Empower RF Systems, a developer and manufacturer of high power RF amplifiers for the defense and commercial markets, since 2013. Since 2007, Mr. Phelps has served as a director of CarParts.com and its predecessor US AutoParts, a public company. From 2007 to 2017 he was chair of its Audit Committee and a member of the Nominating and Governance Committee. Currently Mr. Phelps serves as CarParts.com’s Board Chair ,chair of the Compensation Committee and member of the Audit Committee. From 2000 until his retirement in 2006, Mr. Phelps served in several executive positions for Spirent plc, a leading communications technology company, most recently as President of the Performance Analysis Broadband division. From 1996 to 2000, Mr. Phelps was at Netcom Systems, a provider of network test and measurement equipment, most recently as President and Chief Executive Officer. Prior to that, Mr. Phelps held executive positions, including Chair and Chief Executive Officer, at MICOM Communications and in various financial management roles at Burroughs/Unisys Corporation. Mr. Phelps holds a B.S. degree in mathematics from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York and an M.B.A. from The University of Rochester in Rochester, New York.

N. Leigh Anderson, Ph.D. joined the Board in May 2017 and is a member of the Board's Audit Committee and Nominating & Governance Committee. He is a Founder and CEO of SISCAPA Assay Technologies, (www.SISCAPA.com). His interests are focused on the proteins of human blood as disease biomarkers, and the introduction of biomarker panels in clinical diagnostics using peptide-level mass spectrometry assays (the SISCAPA technology).  Dr. Anderson obtained a BA in Physics from Yale and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Cambridge University, working at the MRC laboratory of Molecular Biology on hemoglobin structure with M. F. Perutz, and later with Sydney Brenner.  Subsequently he co-founded (with Dr. Norman Anderson) the Molecular Anatomy Program at the Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago) where his work in the development of 2-D electrophoresis technology earned him the 1983 Pittsburgh Conference Analytical Chemistry Award and the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s Young Investigator Award.  After leaving Argonne, Dr. Anderson was a founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Large Scale Biology Corporation, where he co-led a highly successful Nasdaq IPO in 2000.  Beginning work in clinical mass spectrometry in 2002, he founded and is CEO of the Plasma Proteome Institute, a non-profit biomedical scientific research institute in Washington, D.C., and SISCAPA Assay Technologies, Inc., whose core technology he invented and developed.  He has served on the boards of directors of three public technology companies including Dade Behring, a global diagnostics company acquired by Siemens, Luna Innovations and Large Scale Biology.  He has published 175 papers, been granted 44 US Patents, and was awarded the 2009 Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) Distinguished Achievement Award in Proteomic Science.  SISCAPA received the 2014 HUPO Science and Technology Award.

David Chanley joined the Luna Board in December 2023. A Co-Founder and Managing Partner with White Hat Capital Partners, he has more than 20 years of experience advising management teams and Boards of technology companies on market positioning, mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategies to create shareholder value. Over the course of his career, Mr. Chanley has demonstrated success helping companies effectively communicate their competitive strengths and investment highlights to the institutional investment community.

Prior to co-founding White Hat Capital Partners LP in 2016, Mr. Chanley was Managing Director and Co-Head of Stifel’s Global Technology Investment Banking Group where he oversaw coverage of all the firm’s technology sub-sectors including Communications, Electronics & Applied Technologies, Internet & Digital Media, Software & SaaS, Tech-Enabled Services and Telecom. In addition, he served as a Member of the Investment Banking Management Committee as well as the Fairness Committee. In 1999, he joined Thomas Weisel Partners just after its founding and became a Partner in 2007. Earlier in his career, Mr. Chanley was an Investment Banking Associate at Montgomery Securities and a Research Associate at Greenwich Associates.

During his investment banking career, Mr. Chanley developed extensive, deep relationships with corporate executives, board members, senior leaders of major private equity firms, hedge funds, law firms and investment banks. He provided strategic advice to management teams and Boards on a wide range of corporate transactions for leading public Technology companies. Mr. Chanley has also advised numerous public and private technology companies on strategic sales to industry leaders.  

Mr. Chanley received his A.B. in Business Economics and Organizational Behavior & Management from Brown University in 1996 and has held various alumni leadership and board positions for Brown over the past 25 years. 

 

Pamela Coe was elected to Luna's Board of Directors in May 2021 and brings with her significant legal and business knowledge and expertise, including experience in corporate governance matters, securities law, and executive compensation and compliance matters. She is a member of the Board’s Compensation Committee. Ms. Coe served as Senior Vice President, Legal & Secretary for Liberty Media Corporation and its sister companies until her retirement in 2020. Previously she was Senior Counsel - Finance for Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), which merged with AT&T. Prior to her tenure at TCI, Ms. Coe was a Partner in a major San Francisco based law firm. During her tenure at the firm, Ms. Coe specialized in corporate, securities and banking law. Ms. Coe has served on the Board of Directors of Frontier Communications Parent, Inc. since April 2021 and served as a member of the Board of Directors of Expedia Group, Inc. from December 2012 to July 2019. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Arizona State University and a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Los Angeles – School of Law.

Kevin Ilcisin was named Luna's President and Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors on August 1, 2024. Mr. Ilcisin is the co-founder of the advisory firm Juniper Strategies. Prior to founding Juniper, Mr. Ilcisin served as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at National Instruments where he led several acquisitions as well as the sale of National Instruments to Emerson.  Prior to National Instruments, he was the Chief Technology officer of Tektronix, a subsidiary of Fortive, a spin-off of Danaher Corporation, where he managed strategic planning and technology growth initiatives.

Mr. Ilcisin has also held several general management and technology executive roles in the semiconductor equipment, consumer electronics, and energy research industries, including start-ups and scale ups.  

Mr. Ilcisin holds a Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Plasma Physics from Princeton University and B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering with Distinction from the University of Alberta.

Gary Spiegel joined the Luna’s Board of Directors in 2015. He is chairman of the Board’s Compensation Committee and a member of the Board’s Nominating & Governance Committee. He has more than 40 years of experience in the photonics industry. He has held positions of vice president, Sales and marketing, senior vice president, Sales and Business Development, and senior vice president, Business Development at Newport Corporation from 2002 to 2013. Mr. Spiegel retired from Newport Corporation in 2014 and is currently a business development consultant. He has a bachelor’s degree in industrial marketing from Baruch College of the City University of New York. He also sits on the Board of Telescent Inc., an early stage technology company focused on software defined network cross connect technology and is a member of SPIE Financial Advisory Committee and an honored Fellow of the SPIE and the recipient of its 2020 Directors Award.

Mary Beth Vitale has served as a member of Luna’s Board of Directors since September 2019. She is chair of the Board’s Nominating & Governance Committee and a member of the Board’s Audit Committee.  In 2001, she co-founded Pellera, LLC., a consulting firm specializing in cybersecurity and board governance to boards of directors. Previously, she had served as President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of WestwindMedia.com, President and Chief Operating Officer of RMI.NET, and President-Western States and corporate officer for AT&T. She received her bachelor’s degree from Hillsdale College; a Master’s degree from the University of Colorado; and an Advanced Management certificate from the Wharton School.  Ms. Vitale has been recognized as a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Board Leadership Fellow, Certified Director and SEC qualified financial expert.  She currently is a faculty member for the NACD in board governance and cyber security training.  She is also a Co-Chair and founder of the Women Corporate Directors (WCD), Colorado Chapter and serves on WCD’s international board.  Ms. Vitale also earned the CERT Certificate in Cybersecurity Oversight from the Software Engineering Institute, which demonstrates her commitment to advanced cybersecurity literacy to the Company, investors and regulators. Ms. Vitale also served on the board of directors of CoBiz Financial, a publicly traded national commercial bank, from 2005 to 2018 and on the board of directors of Zynex, Inc., a publicly traded medical technology company, from 2008 to 2014.