Ata Zad, CEO/Founder

Dr. Zad, holding Ph.D., M.Sc and B.Sc in Polymer Engineering, has extensive experience on Polymer/composites industry with 10 years of Industrial NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT in North America. He has filed two international patents on Plastic films, which have already been commercialized. He has worked on the morphology - structure - mechanical properties relationship in polymer blends and composites in synthetic and biopolymers. He has been leading R&D projects during the last 10 years, where he could develop some more technical-managerial-consulancy skills from ideation to product launch. He has Innovation and Competitiveness Certificate (by Robert Cooper, inventor of Stage-Gate process).

Sylvain Lebel, Global Sales Manager

Sylvain brings over 20 years of executive experience in sales and marketing management to Axipolymer. He previously held the position of Business Development Representative with WP Innova in the food and industrial packaging market. He also held the executive role as International Global Sales Manager/Innovator and implemented manufacturing processes of sports products in the carbon fiber industry with Sheng Long & Full Tech company in China. With his vast experience on both the manufacturing and sales side he will be a good addition to the Axiploymer team.

In his spare time, Sylvain enjoys playing golf, hockey, baseball and his passion is international travel

Pierre Carreau, Senior Advisor

Dr. Carreau is highly involved in research on the rheology and processing of polymeric systems, and is the author of nearly 300 papers published in scientific journals and 2 patents. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and of the Royal Society of Canada. He was the editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering from 1996 to 2006.

He is actively working on industry related projects at Polytechnique Montreal. He has all required laboratories for polymer processing and characterisation available. 

Daniel Lantz, Senior Advisor

Dr. Lantz has worked in almost all aspects of the recycling industry, from recycling program design through facility operation.  He designed and implemented Extended Producer Responsibility programs in Ontario and BC.  Directly and as Director of PACNEXT, he provides strategic advice to consumer goods manufacturing companies and retailers on packaging design for the circular economy.  Currently an expert advisor on plastics for the Consumer Goods Forum.  He is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Wastes Management in the UK and a Certified Environmental Professional in Waste and Sustainability in Canada.  He holds an M.Sc. in physics, an MBA, and a DBA in environmental sustainability in business. 

Basil Favis, Senior Advisor

After a period in industry as a group leader with Johnson and Johnson Inc., Dr. Favis worked as program manager for polymer blends with the Industrial Materials Institute of the National Research Council of Canada. Since 1990 he has been a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the École Polytechnique de Montréal. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific papers and holds over 15 patents in the field of polymer blends.

ExxonMobil, Arkema and TeknorApex are examples of companies that he has worked with closely in recent years.

M.H. Alifam, VP. Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Alifam Works on foundations and  cutting edge theoretical aspects of artificial intelligence as well as leading several practical and industrial projects implementing  advanced machine learning and deep learning algorithms. He is actively involved in designing and industrializing several intelligent decision aid systems.

He holds his Ph.D., M.Sc. degree in Operations Research with several publications from Montreal University.