Volker J. Sorger is the Rhines Endowed Professor for Semiconductor Photonics and was the Founding Director of the Florida Semiconductor Institute at the University of Florida. He oversees groundbreaking R&D, technology lab-to-fab transitions and modernized education toward securing key innovations and creating jobs. Being an evangelist of the U.S. CHIPS & Science Act, Dr. Sorger creates and builds public-private partnerships by uniting technical experts, stakeholders and policymakers to strengthen a global semiconductor ecosystem of the “free world.” As such, he crafts global supply-chain partnerships to build bridges between the U.S. and its allies, including Western Europe, Germany, Japan and South Korea, toward accelerating R&D, innovation and manufacturing in semiconductors and photonics. In earlier science-policy activities, he assumed roles in the National Photonic Initiative, adding to policies of the White House OSTP. Dr. Sorger’s technology and R&D thrusts include, photonic-electronic integrated circuits, AI accelerators, advanced packaging, optoelectronics devices, and chip prototyping. For his work, Dr. Sorger received multiple awards including the SPIE Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award, top 16 educators in the nation, the Presidential PECASE Award, the Emil Wolf Prize, and the National Academy of Sciences award of the year. Dr. Sorger held editor roles in Optica, Applied Physics Rev., eLight, Chips, and Editor-in-Chief of Nanophotonics. He is a Fellow of The Optical Society (formerly OSA), SPIE, IEEE, IAAM. He holds more than 20 U.S. patents, most of which are licensed to corporations and ventures. He founded and advised several deep-tech and SAAS ventures.