David Schatz

Imagine your laptop, television, stereo, light bulbs and other electrical equipment all being powered wireless. No more power cables needed. Your mobile phone battery is charged wireless, too, as are the batteries of your electric car.

It may sound like science fiction, but it is existing technology based on research done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A team of physicists, led by professor Marin Soljačić, developed the theoretical basis for this novel method for wireless electric power transfer in 2005, and validated their theories experimentally in 2007. The technology is now being made commercially available by WiTricity Corp., a company founded by Soljačić and his colleagues.

The wireless transfer of power is based on the fact that the magnetic fields of two properly designed devices with closely matched resonant frequencies can couple into a single continuous magnetic field. This phenomenon can be used to transfer power from one device to the other at high efficiency and over a distance range that is useful for real-world applications.

David Schatz joined WiTricity in 2008 as Director of Business Development and Marketing. He holds a B.Sc. (1979) in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University, and an M.Sc. (1983) in Management from the Sloan School, MIT.

Prior to joining WiTricity, David was V.P. of Corporate Development at Cognex Corporation the world’s leading supplier of machine vision systems. David joined Cognex in 1983, soon after the company was founded and during the infancy of the machine vision and robotics industry.  As V.P. of Corporate Development, he led the acquisition and integration of 12 companies, contributing to the growth of Cognex to over $220M in annual revenues. David serves on the Advisory Boards of EnergyClimate Solutions, and Reify Corp., and is co-author of seven patents.