To keep learning about the people behind Mantis here is the second leg of our journey: our amazing CSO.

Can you talk a bit about your background, expertise and role at Mantis Photonics?

I am a physicist, I worked for 10 years in academia in the field of ultrafast lasers. For my PhD I worked in the group of Pr. Anne L’Huillier who received the Nobel prize this year for her work on attosecond science. Then I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in France on laser driven particle acceleration (we were building a miniature particle accelerator using lasers). Finally, I came back to Sweden to work in the same field as a researcher. This is when I came up with the idea for a hyperspectral camera, for a long time this was a side job, a hobby and I did not have much time to dedicate to it. But when my position at the university finished, I started to investigate more this potential application and this is when I talked about the project to Denis who decided to jump on, and a few months after Mantis was born.

My role at Mantis is to develop the hardware (the camera) and to analyse the images we obtain.

If you were to describe Mantis in 3 words, what would they be? Describe yourself in 3 words as well.

Hyperspectral retinal scanning.

Physicist turned ophthalmologist.

What inspired you to pursue this technology/this career and made you want to be part of Mantis?

I quickly had the intuition that the hyperspectral camera could be very valuable. But it took 3 years to confirm this and we keep working on getting more confirmations every day.

For an ambitious and revolutionary product such as Mantis’ HSI camera, what would you say is the biggest challenge you faced so far?

We have just scratched the surface of what it can do, so the biggest challenge is to uncover all the camera’s potential. Another challenge is to convince the medical community about the interest of our camera.

What do you do for fun?

I have two young kids, so at the moments that’s all I do. But before I used to windsurf and play rugby (that’s how I met Denis more than 10 years ago).

How do you define success personally? And how does it influence your professional pursuits?

What drives me is to be able to solve problems in a new way using new methods. This is why I became a physicist in the first place and I started this company.

What advice would you give to young aspirants in your field (or entrepreneurs) based on your experience and lessons learned?

For young researchers I would tell them to be curious about everything, other fields all the instruments they work with or numerical methods. And if they think of becoming an entrepreneur, I would tell them to develop their network, you will need the help from a lot of people.

Where do you see yourself/your company in 5 years?

I see myself still working for Mantis developing new products, while Mantis is selling devices all over the world.

Being part of an international team, is there a language you like to use more? Maybe one you would like to learn now?

We used to speak mostly French but now English is our main language. I am still waiting for a Swedish team member to practice it.

What is your favourite movie?

Birdman

Want to start a conversation with Diego?

diego.guenot@mantis-photonics.com