Meet the team
Executive Team
Dr Carsten Giebeler – CEO
Dr Carsten Giebeler serves as the Chief Executive Officer. In addition to the CEO role Carsten works extensively in business development activities.
Previously Carsten spun out Pyreos Ltd from Siemens AG in Germany, where he was working as a venture Manager for the Siemens Technology Accelerator. Carsten served from 2009 to 2015 as the Chief Technology Officer of Pyreos, which grew to 40 people, and he had sole responsibility for all technology developments, IP and technology partnerships. In addition, he was leading the sales activities in Germany and Korea.
Prior to that Carsten held a number of R&D positions at the Hewlett Packard research laboratory in Palo Alto, USA and the Philips Research Laboratory (NatLabs) in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Carsten holds a PhD in physics from the University of Sheffield and an MBA form the University of Edinburgh.
Dr Benjamin Wiesent – COO
Dr Benjamin Wiesent is the co-founder of Spectrolytic and currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the company.
Benjamin used his PhD thesis work to set up Spectrolytic to bridge a gap in the marketplace for cost-effective laboratory, inline and portable Mid Infra-Red spectrometers. Originally set up with oil condition monitoring in mind, the application and product portfolio now extends into many industries.
Benjamin holds a degree and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Munich.
Patrick Taylor – CCO
Patrick Taylor serves as the chief commercial officer of the company. In addition to the role Patrick is responsible for the development of our global distribution program, business development activities and corporate development.
Previously Patrick has been CEO for worx4you Group, EMEA commercial lead for Luminultra and Sales and marketing Director for Conidia Bioscience. Patrick has served in interim and permanent leadership roles in both global corporations and SME business for the last 35 years. Patrick also has extensive M&A experience in multiple markets.
Patrick holds BSc in Systems Engineering from Newcastle Polytechnic.
Management Team
Neil Conway – Applications & Solutions
Neil is a chartered Engineer (CEng) and Scientist (CSci) and corporate member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (MIChemE) and holds a BEng (Hons) in Chemical & Process Engineering from Strathclyde University.
Previously Spyros worked as an applications engineer at Pyreos Ltd, where he developed sensor-based algorithms for gesture sensing. Prior to this he worked as an ASIC Software Engineer at Schrader Electronics and spent several years at Heriot Watt University as a researcher into free-space optical neural networks. Spyros holds a BSc in computer science and an MSc in embedded systems engineering.
Dr Costas Plakas – Software
Costas is responsible for the development and management of Spectrolytic’s software platforms and cloud-based dashboard offerings.
Previously, Costas worked for 10 years In the Medical Imaging sector for Toshiba, both as senior scientist specialising in algorithms and AI for medical applications, and as a project/product manager. His post-doctorate experience at Heriot-Watt University includes working as a computer vision development manager in Robotics for 5 years.
Costas holds several project management qualifications (PRINCE II, AgilePM) and is working towards an MBA at the University of Strathclyde. Costas holds a BSc in Physics, an MSc in Knowledge Based Systems and a PhD in Computer Science.