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Leonard Reiffel
Dr. Len Reiffel currently heads three Chicago-based start-ups--Exelar Medical Corporation (www.exelarmedical.com), Luxelar Corporation (www.luxelar.com) and Iron Mount Corporation. His previous entrepreneurial activities have included both privately financed ventures as well as taking one of his companies (Interand Corp.) through the full gamut of development stages to a successful IPO.
Len is a widely-recognized scientist, educator and technical administrator as well as an inventor/entrepreneur. As Deputy Director of NASA's Apollo Program Office (1965-1969), he was the Headquarters executive responsible for all manned lunar experiments and support equipment. He was also the NASA Headquarters person overseeing the lunar landing-site selection process, scientific aspects of astronaut activities, both in-flight and on the lunar surface, and matters of astronaut safety involving a science component such as solar-flare hazards, bio-contamination, lunar surface reactivity and many other such topics. Reiffel also served for several years as the Technical Director of the Interagency Manned Space Flight Experiments Board (NASA, DOD, USAF etc.). While carrying out his NASA responsibilities, Dr. Reiffel concurrently was science consultant and on-air Science Commentator for the CBS Network.
Prior to joining NASA, Dr. Reiffel was Group Vice President of the IT Research Institute, where he was a member of the Management Committee and headed the Institute's activities in physics, fluid dynamics, space science and geophysics, while directing a staff of several hundred research scientists, engineers and support staff. On four occasions, Reiffel received the Industrial Research IR1OO Award (now known as the R&D 100 Award) for the development of one of the 100 most outstanding technical products of the year. He is the holder of approximately 50 patents. In 2004, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presented Reiffel with an EMMY for his invention in the 1960’s of the now globally-used Telestrator TV ”chalkboard”.
For many years, as an avocation, Dr. Reiffel regularly covered important
events in science for CBS television and radio and was the featured personality
on such long-running programs as “Dimensions on Tomorrow's Living”.
His CBS TV series on science and technology, “Backyard Safari”
was an Emmy nominee. He received the Aviation Writer's Association Award
for outstanding coverage of events in space and is also the recipient
of broadcasting's most coveted prize--the George Foster Peabody Award.
During almost a decade, over one thousand topics in science and technology
were the subjects of Dr. Reiffel's by-lined columns “Science and
You,” which were published in newspapers in the U.S. and abroad
via World Book and The Los Angeles
Times Syndicate.
Reiffel began his professional career at the Institute for Nuclear Studies,
University of Chicago, where he worked in association with Professors
H. L. Anderson and Enrico Fermi on the design of the 450 inch
cyclotron which was constructed there. A Fellow of the American Physical
Society and a member of numerous other professional organizations, Reiffel
is recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from his Alma Mater, the
Illinois Institute of Technology and a variety of technical and entrepreneurial
awards from various other organizations. He was inducted into the IIT
Hall of Fame in 1984. He is currently a member of
the Board of Overseers at Illinois Tech. Reiffel received his B.S., M.S.,
and Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology.