Chris Theis, chief quality officer, Coherent Corp. He joined Coherent Corp. in 2019 following the merger with Finisar. At Finisar, he was most recently Vice President of Quality, a position he held since 2017. Dr. Theis has over 20 years of experience in the optoelectronics industry and has served in a number of quality and reliability roles throughout his career. He started as a reliability engineer in the microelectronics division at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, where he worked to develop some of the first non-hermetic active optical devices.
Dr. Theis moved to Optium Corporation in 2005 and became the Quality and Reliability Manager for their rapidly growing 300-pin transponder business. Optium was acquired by Finisar Corporation in 2008, and Dr. Theis became the Quality and Reliability Director responsible for all of Finisar’s telecommunications products before being appointed Vice President of Quality in 2017. He holds a B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University.
A colleague once remarked, "Quality is like water; it flows toward the gaps." This illustrates that quality supports all areas of a business, targeting weaknesses and communication gaps. Ultimately, a strong quality organization aims to improve processes and ensures customer satisfaction.
