Dr. Tadao Hashimoto is the CEO/CTO of SixPoint Materials. His background is crystal growth and device technology of compound semiconductors. He demonstrated a bulk crystal of gallium nitride (GaN) growth by a method called ammonothermal growth at UC Santa Barbara and received Ph.D. in Materials Engineering. He started SixPoint Materials to commercialize the technology in 2006. He also received MBA from University of Nebraska, Lincoln with emphasis of international business in 2020. At SixPoint, he developed the near equilibrium ammonothermal (NEAT) method to grow gallium nitride (GaN) bulk crystals. SixPoint is currently developing 100 kV photoconductive semiconductor switch (PCSS) for hybrid high-voltage DC circuit breaker under APRA-E OPEN 2021 program.