Our Company

Rubens Technologies was founded in late 2018 by Daniel Pelliccia to develop and commercialise fruit quality sensing technology based on spectroscopy.

Our product is currently deployed with apple, stone fruit and avocado growers and packers across four continents.

Daniel Pelliccia, PhD

Founder and CEO

Physicist and data scientist. Daniel started his career as a physicist, developing imaging and sensing models for large scale facilities such as particle accelerators and synchrotrons in Europe, USA and Australia.

Daniel has been awarded an Early Career research award by the Australian Government in 2014 and developed technologies for microscopy and medical imaging.

In 2016, Daniel started a successful technical consulting career in the field of imaging technologies, spectroscopy and machine learning analytics. Some of his clients include the Victorian Government (Australia), the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Agriculture Victoria and the Department of Primary Industries (Queensland, Australia).

David Lester, PhD

Business Development

Dr. Lester has had broad experience in development and commercialization of multiple products. He has performed these duties in large corporations, midsize companies and startups in the US, Australia, EU
and Singapore.

Presently he is an active advisor or team member of multiple startups where his focus is on ensuring that the company is built for future growth and development. He also focuses on company and product strategy and establishing a clear pathway to the appropriate market.

Aside from working with over 15 startups in Australia, US and EU, he has considerable public and private sector experience. He has worked at executive levels in big Pharma (Pfizer and Pharmacia) and had a successful career in the US regulatory agency, the USFDA.

Initially, he had a successful academic career working in leading research institutions including the National Institutes of Health, Harvard Medical School and Weizmann Institute (Israel). He received his doctorate from Northwestern University.

Daniel Maung, MBA

Commercial

Daniel is a commercially driven and highly accomplished marketing director with extensive experience in developing and executing high value marketing campaigns to support the strategic direction of the organisation.

Past experience includes holding senior positions in Australia, Asia Pacific & Japan, Middle East & Europe. Achievements in career have been evidenced in global organisations, including significant technology experience and in addition media, consultancy, and advertising.

Kieran Hirsh, PhD

Data science

Dr. Hirsh has recently completed is PhD in astrophysics at the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France). He has in-depth expertise in numerical analysis, numerical modelling and machine learning.

Kieran is working on the development of data pipelines and machine learning algorithms for fruit prediction based on Rubens sensors.