Robert Fleming

Dr. Robert Fleming has recently accepted a position as Vice President of Research and Technology at Zymergen, a late stage startup company using micobiology to fundamentally change the way materials are made and what they are made of.

Prior to this role, Bob was the Chief Technology Officer of CLEARink Displays. During his tenure at CLEARink he led the development of the world’s first full-color, video retro-reflective display leading to “Best in Show Award” at the 2017 Society for Information Display Conference, the IDTechEx Technical Development Materials award, and the “People’s Choice Award” at the 2019 Society for Information Display Conference. He recruited top talent and grew the R&D team from 3 to 14 people bringing together a multi-site, and multi-disciplinary team from chemistry, physics, optics, electronics, hardware, and software to bring the CLEARink technology to market.

Bob has over 22 years of experience bring new technologies from idea to commercial products in the fields of optics, electronics, materials, and devices. Prior to joining CLEARink Displays, Bob worked for the Imerys Corporation as Director of Materials Research.

Prior to joining Imerys, Bob was the Co-Founder and CTO of Shocking Technologies, Inc. a Silicon Valley electronic materials start-up where he grew the company from a 2 person start up with an idea to 47 people and a product qualified in a cell phone with high volume manufacturing. Before Co-Founding Shocking Technologies Bob worked 12 years for the 3M Corporation in Saint Paul, MN in a broad range of R&D and management functions. While working at 3M Bob developed new retroreflective fabrics, optical interference films for windows, flexible display materials, and nanocomposites for optical applications. In addition to developing new products and technologies, Bob also has expertise in scale-up manufacturing process technologies from organic reactions, milling, compounding, blending, roll to roll coating, thin film vacuum deposition, and roll to roll microreplication.

Bob earned his Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Winthrop University. He is an inventor on over 57 issuedUnited States patents, ranging in fields from nanocomposites, adhesives, optical interference coatings, retroreflectors, displays, battery separators, optical materials, and electronic materials. Dr. Fleming has also been an invited speaker with multiple publications.