People at Xerox Innovation

Dr. Tolga Kurtoglu is CEO of PARC, a Xerox company, which is in "the business of breakthroughs.” He joined PARC in 2010. Practicing open innovation since being incorporated in 2002, PARC provides custom R&D services, technology, specialized expertise, best practices, and intellectual property to Xerox’s business groups, Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, startups, and government.

Dr. Kurtoglu oversees PARC’s R&D investments for Xerox and its innovation portfolio for commercial clients and government agencies in a diverse set of focus areas and competencies including human-centered innovation services, intelligent agents and systems, clean energy, smart packaging, machine learning and analytics, security and privacy, printed electronics and digital manufacturing.

Motivated by his passion for bringing innovations to market, Dr. Kurtoglu specializes in leading cross-functional teams to apply science and technology to develop creative solutions to real world problems. Since joining PARC, he has held various leadership roles focusing on R&D management, product strategy, and technology commercialization. In his early years at PARC, he pioneered the formation of PARC’s digital design and manufacturing (DDM) program. Later he created and led the System Sciences Laboratory by building a technology portfolio across hardware, software, and process technologies. In both roles, he managed multi-million-dollar R&D investments and product strategy encompassing several platforms and market offerings, and led successful transition of inventions from an R&D output to commercial software systems and services. Prior to PARC, he was a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center, and a mechanical design engineer at Dell Corporation.

Dr. Kurtoglu’s own research focused on computation and artificial intelligence applied to design and manufacturing of complex systems, and application of preventive and predictive analytics techniques to engineered systems. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University — both in Mechanical Engineering. He holds a bachelor’s degree in the same field from Orta Dogu Technical University (ODTU). He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles and papers in leading journals and conferences in his field, and regularly serves in organizational leadership roles for the ASME, AIAA, AAAI, Design Society, and Prognostics and Health Management Society. He is the recipient of the IEEE Best Professional Paper Award at the Prognostics and Health Management Conference, IEEE Best Application Paper Award from IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, NASA Ames Technical Excellence Award, PARC Excellence Award, PARC Golden Acorn Award, and the Best Design Award in “Dexterous Robot Hand” Design Competition.

Lawrence Lee is Vice President of Incubation and Strategy for Xerox’s Research & Development organization, where he is responsible for the incubation of new products and services from ideation to commercialization. He also leads technology strategy to ensure that Xerox is investing in the right set of technologies, intellectual property, and partnerships to deliver the existing product portfolio as well as capture new business opportunities.

Lee specializes in commercializing new technologies that enable disruptive innovation. He was previously Senior Director of Strategy at PARC, a Xerox Company, where he led strategy and portfolio management to create new growth options for Xerox and PARC’s commercial clients. He also managed PARC’s strategic relationship with Xerox, including the delivery of innovations and IP that led to new commercial offerings for Xerox’s services businesses in transportation, state and local government, healthcare, and customer care.

Prior to joining PARC, Lee served in leadership roles for two software startups. He co-founded Zoundry LLC, one of the first social commerce web services that connected bloggers with online retailers, and he was Vice President of Business Development at Mirror Worlds Technologies, Inc., an enterprise and desktop search company that pioneered social information streams in the late 1990s.

Earlier in his career, Lee worked in economic development in Philadelphia and invested in social ventures at CoreStates Bank. He holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and joint bachelor degrees from Wharton and the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul joined Xerox in 1995 and has held a variety of managerial positions at XRCC. He has managed teams that developed materials for Xerox product platforms, including solid ink components, and new inks for Xerox Phaser platform, Xerox ColorQube and the CiPress platform. From 2008 - 2009 he was Manager Xerox Strategy Integration and Planning, based in Rochester, New York, with responsibility for technology alignment across Xerox technology platforms.

Paul received his Ph.D. in the field of Chemistry from the University of Bath, England in 1991, was an NSERC Fellow from 1995 to 1997, and in 2001 received an MBA from the Rotman School of Management, at the University of Toronto.

He is a named inventor on 68 U.S. patents and has 16 publications.

Tom Kavassalis is Vice President of Strategy and Alliances for the Xerox Innovation Group (XIG) — a position he has held since 2006.

As Vice President of Strategy and Alliances, Tom leads strategy development for the Xerox Innovation Group. In this role, Tom ensures that Xerox has a balanced portfolio of research and technology investments supporting Xerox's near term business strategies and creating options for the future. His alliances work is focused on leveraging external innovation. Additional responsibilities in Xerox include program management, intellectual property development and university affairs.

In addition to his role at Xerox, Tom serves on the Board of Directors, as the Past Chairman, of the Industrial Research Institute, the authoritative source of R&D innovation leadership solutions for its member companies since 1938.

Joining the Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC) in 1987 as a member of the research staff, Tom worked in the field of polymer physics and developed theories and models to explain the mechanical and rheological properties of polymeric materials and established a competence in modeling and simulation of material systems. While conducting research at XRCC, Tom maintained a concurrent appointment as adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo. Tom became Associate Centre Manager of XRCC in 1995. He has led the strategy and planning functions in XIG, and the former research and technology organizations, since 1997.

Prior to joining Xerox, Tom served as a research scientist at Ontario Hydro Research Division and as a visiting scientist at the Instituut Lorentz in the Netherlands.

Tom holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from MIT. His thesis research was in the field of statistical mechanics.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Tom currently lives in Oakville, Canada with his wife Catherine. Away from work, his interests include his two children Nicholas and Sarah, nature photography, woodturning, rebuilding vintage cars, and auto-racing. He will always be a bad golfer.