Luminate is a New York State funded startup accelerator program based in Rochester, NY, for optics, photonics, and imaging (OPI) enabled companies. Luminate seeks visionary entrepreneurs solving challenging problems including but not limited to: machine vision, inspection, biophotonics, security, surveillance, augmented & virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles.

Through SANICA Ventures, Don provides consulting and advisory services, serves on a number of Boards and Advisory Committees, and is an angel investor. SANICA Ventures engages with businesses in a variety of ways:- Member of 10X Venture Partners (www.10xvp.com)- Catalyst at MIT Deshpande Center (www.deshpande.mit.edu)- Consulting and Advisory Services- Former Chairman of the Rochester Angel Network and its $2M Fund- Entrepreneur in Residence, High Tech of Rochester (2012-2015)- Board Memberships- Management of the $3.5M RIT Venture Capital Fund (2012-2014)- Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Simon School of Business, University of Rochester (2009-2012)

As President and Founder of QED Technologies, Don took a novel finishing process from a university laboratory to worldwide commercial success. QED develops, manufactures, and markets precision finishing and metrology equipment for the optics industry, with personnel in the U.S., Germany, France, Japan, and Australia. QED was acquired in June 2006, by Cabot Microelectronics Corporation (NASDAQ: CCMP), an Illinois based company that is the world’s leading supplier of chemical mechanical planarization slurries used in advanced semiconductor and data storage manufacturing. Golini stayed on as President until 2010.Since its founding, QED grew from 5 to more than 50 employees with more than a dozen fundamental international patents, and the company has sold equipment in North America, Europe and Asia. Over the years, QED received various prestigious awards, including the Photonics Circle of Excellence Award, the US Department of Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement Award, the Rochester Top 100 Award, the R&D Magazine R&D100 Award, the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and the Rochester Business Ethics Award.

Optical Manufacturing Technologies (OMT) contracted with the Center for Optics Manufacturing (COM) to manage its Manufacturing Sciences program. OMT created and led a consortium to study issues related to optics manufacturing. Members of the consortium included 17 faculty members and 20+ graduate students from the Universities of Rochester, Arizona, Central Florida, Alfred, as well as Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Several members of the American Precision Optics Manufacturers Association (APOMA) also brought industry-critical issues to the forefront of the group. Together, these partners examined tooling, process parameters, chemo-mechanical effects, materials sciences, and metrology issues. The Manufacturing Sciences program was aimed at developing a comprehensive understanding of the underlying science involved in the manufacture of precision optics, and subsequently disseminating its findings to industry.

Don worked on the manufacture of large (meter class) optics using computer numerically controlled machines, very large robots, and a variety of interferometers. Eventually, he managed a small group of manufacturing engineers after being mentored for years by a true expert in the field, Dr. Wiktor Rupp. Don was also involved in R&D for the manufacturing group which innovated novel finishing techniques and scaled them to production.