2023 Inductees

Jason Eichenholz

Jason Eichenholz, Ph.D.

Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Luminar Technologies
Courtesy Faculty Member, CREOL – College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida

82 U.S. Patents

Jason Eichenholz, Ph.D. is a trailblazing innovator in laser and optics-enabled technologies, especially in lidar (light detection and ranging) applications advancing the self-driving vehicle industry, as well as fundamental product development for early cancer detection and environmental studies to military explosives detection.

Dr. Eichenholz is currently the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Luminar Technologies, a sensing technology company that will become the core platform to enable safe fully autonomous vehicles. As CTO, he is responsible for research and development of new products, product roadmap, and bringing Luminar’s technology to market.

A serial entrepreneur, Dr. Eichenholz founded several other companies, and led the research and development on hundreds of millions of dollars in revolutionary products. His patents have been licensed and/or productized into a variety of applications including battlefield explosives detection, early cancer detection, and environmental studies from the depths of the oceans to the top of Mt. Everest and even on the Moon and Mars.

Before joining Luminar, Eichenholz was the CEO and founder of Open Photonics, an open innovation company dedicated to the commercialization of optics and photonics technologies as well as an executive at some of the largest optics and photonics companies in the world. He has also served as the Principal Investigator for Air Force and DARPA funded research and development programs.

His products and various companies have been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, IEEE Spectrum, Tech Crunch, Engadget, Axios, Venture Beat, and Wired. He is a Fellow of SPIE—the International Society for Optics and Photonics, and a Fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America). An alumnus of the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL)—where he earned both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Optical Science and Engineering, Dr. Eichenholz enjoys giving back to UCF by mentoring students and lecturing on campus as a courtesy faculty member at CREOL. He currently serves on the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science Dean’s advisory board and the CREOL undergraduate advisory board. He earned his B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.