Lit Thinking Team

Dr. Leo Schowalter

Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Schowalter oversees all aspects of our semiconductor research program, which is a core initiative for Lit Thinking. Together with the University of Central Florida where Dr. Schowalter has been appointed as a Research Professor, Lit Thinking is setting up a Center for Research into high aluminum content alloys of nitride semiconductors for far UVC emitter and high-power applications.

After receiving his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Dr. Schowalter was employed by the GE Global Research Center in Schenectady, NY. He joined the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Physics Department in 1987 and was Department Chair from 1997 to 2000.

In 1997, he co-founded Crystal IS (with Dr. Glen Slack), where he led the commercial development of UVC LEDs (based on AlN substrates also developed at Crystal IS) for disinfection and instrumentation applications and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Asahi Kasei.

Dr. Schowalter was the Asahi Kasei Designated Professor at Nagoya University, Japan from 2019 until 2023 where he helped develop the world’s first UVC laser diode and he continues his collaboration at Nagoya as a Visiting Professor working on laser diodes and other device applications using aluminum nitride substrates. Dr. Schowalter is a global leader in his field and is ideally qualified for his critical role at Lit Thinking.