Dr. Jacob Y. Wong
Airware, Inc.
5973 Encina Road, Suite 109, Goleta, CA 93117
Email-address: jacobwong@airware-inc.com

Dr. Jacob Y. Wong was born and raised in Hong Kong. He did his undergraduate work at Princeton University (’63) and obtained his Ph.D degree in Physics (*67) under Professor Arthur Schawlow, one of the inventors of the laser, for research work in infrared lasers. He joined Hewlett-Packard Company in 1968 and stayed there until 1978 when he joined Hughes Aircraft Company in the aerospace industry. He started his own company, Telaire Systems, specializing in non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) gas sensors, in 1989 and sold it to Engelhard Corporation in 1997. Today Telaire Systems is part of GE Sensing, an operating division of General Electric Company. In 2003, after five years of non-competitive restriction in the field of NDIR gas sensors, Dr. Wong started Airware Inc., a company focusing in the R&D of advanced NDIR gas sensors.

Since his graduation from Stanford, Dr. Wong has concentrated his work mainly in the R&D of NDIR gas sensors. In the early 1970’s, he pioneered the development of Hewlett-Packard’s legendary 47210A Caponometer, a medical CO2 analyzer for monitoring cardiac patients in the ICU of hospitals. Over the years, Dr. Wong has been granted over 60 US patents in the field of infrared gas sensors. His most notable achievements include an aluminum waveguide sample chamber concept and an NDIR gas sensor output self-correction software (commonly referred to as the Automatic Background Correction or ABC), which are both widely in use throughout the gas sensor industry today. His most recent inventions include an Absorption Biased (AB) methodology in the design of NDIR gas sensors which is capable of significantly reducing the output drifts of such sensors over time and a calibration methodology for AB designed NDIR gas sensors, a wireless technique that is simple, reliable and cost-effective without the need for any gas standards. Today he continues to work in extending the frontier of NDIR gas measurement into the far infrared wavelength region covering the detection of Acetylene, Ethylene, Benzene and other indoor air pollutants in the ppb range.