Management Team
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T.Z. Chu
Chief Executive Officer
TZ Chu has served as CEO of Hoefer Scientific Instruments (biotech instruments and supplies) and Finnigan Instruments (mass spectrometers) and as General Manager of Varian Associates divisions, producing chromatography and atomic absorption spectrophotometer instruments. He has also served on the board of several private and public technology companies, trade associations and international scientific organizations, and as a special limited partner of H&Q venture group.
Terry A. Berger, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Berger is considered by many to be the father of modern super-critical fluid chromatography (SFC). Starting in 1985, he systematically undid many of the misconceptions surrounding SFC. He showed the importance of adequate compressibility compensation to allow separate control of pressure, flow, and composition. He de convoluted the effects of solvent strength and density, showing SFC was far more like HPLC than GC. He introduced the use of polar additives making separation of the strongest organic acids and bases routine. He demonstrated very long small particle packed columns could be practical.
Dr. Berger, along with a colleague from Hewlett Packard (now Agilent Technologies), founded Berger Instruments to provide instruments for the super-critical fluid chromatography market. Along the way they converted the technique from a curiosity to a generally accepted technique in pharmaceutical drug discovery. As Chief Technology Officer at Aurora SFC Systems, Dr Berger remains dedicated to advancing the science of SFC and to creating new, revolutionary ways to bring SFC into the mainstream in a cost effective manner.
Tami MacDuff
Chief Financial Officer
Tamara MacDuff brings more than 15 years of extensive high technology global financial management and operational experience to her position as Chief Financial Officer of Aurora, as well as over seven years of experience in the software as a service industry. Her background includes senior roles in leading companies in the high technology, software and software-as-a-service industries including Yodlee, Biz360, and Brio Software. Skilled in a broad range of disciplines including public company management, international finance, treasury, corporate finance functions, including investor relations and merger and acquisition activities, human resources, legal, and operations.
A Certified Public Accountant, Tamara has a B.S. degree in Business Administration, with a concentration in Accounting from San Jose State University.
Rick Wikfors
Vice President, Research and Development
Rick Wikfors has spent his career making instruments smarter and easier to use. During his 20 plus years developing instruments and systems for analytical chemistry, he has contributed to several awarded patents and gained expertise in the software systems that embed in, or control, the components of a chromatographic system. With primary responsibility for managing research and development, Rick uses his technical expertise to ensure that high value and quality are represented in Aurora SFC Systems' products.
Kimber Fogelman, PhD
Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Fogelman has been involved in the design and testing of analytical and preparative instrumentation since the early 1980’s. He has contributed to multiple awarded patents to date with several additional applications currently under review, including the development of the SFC Fusion concepts. Other contributions have dramatically simplified the practice of robotics, automation and SFC from sample preparation and introduction to collection. As a trained chemist, Dr Fogelman is well aware of the complexities and challenges facing laboratory and industrial chemists. However, as an inventor, he prizes simplicity over all else. By creating simple, easy to use innovations, he hopes to equip chemists to make their tasks safer, more informative, more productive and more enjoyable.
Dave Wetherell
Vice President, Marketing
Dave is the former SFC Product Marketing Manager with the Waters Corporation. He joined Terry Berger and Mark Shuman just after the start of Berger Instruments in 1997. In various roles throughout numerous acquisitions, he has made major contributions from both the service and marketing perspective, leading the service organization through major transitions at Berger, Mettler Toledo, Thar, and Waters. Dave has spent the last 14 years supporting SFC Technology, with the belief that it is a superior technology to HPLC for normal phase separations, particularly chiral analysis. He started his career at Spectra-Physics in Sunnyvale, CA, and spent 9 years at Hewlett-Packard in various roles, completing his work there in the launch of the HP8453 spectrophotometer, reporting to the Waldbronn Analytical Division.