Aaron VanDevender

Aaron VanDevender is the Scientist in Residence at Founders Fund. He monitors the scientific impact of the portfolio, works with portfolio companies, assesses new technologies, and conducts his own research. Prior to Founders Fund, Aaron was CTO of enterprise war games firm The Prosperity Institute. Aaron has designed single-photon and single-atom quantum computers in academia and government (NIST), advanced the quantum-mechanical theory for microscopic black holes, patented the fastest transparent optical switch, and is a co-inventor of yoctotechnology (named after the smallest unit prefix on the SI scale). He then developed next-generation DNA sequencing technology at Halcyon Molecular. His broad scientific interests encompass energy, biotech, nanotech, and computing. Aaron received a SB from MIT and a PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition to entrepreneurial science, Aaron is a professional skydiver.