John Larson, Ph.D.
John Larson is an executive leader with 26 years of experience in the development of advanced semiconductor and magnetic materials. He has held engineering, operational, and executive leadership roles spanning R&D, pilot, and production scales in these industries. As Niron Magnetics’ second employee, John has played a critical role in building the team, culture, technology, and operations that have helped shape the company’s growth over the past nine years.
While at Niron, John has led the planning, build-out, startup and operations of the industrial lab that produced the world’s first scalable high performance Iron Nitride magnets. He then recruited and led the commercial pilot engineering and operations teams that currently provide customer samples of Iron Nitride magnets. He is now focused on the design, construction, and operations readiness for Niron’s first full-scale production plant in Sartell, Minnesota. John passionately embraces Niron’s mission to combine great people, culture, technology and processes that will sustainably produce globally impactful Iron Nitride magnets.
Prior to Niron, John spent 17 years in the semiconductor industry, working across R&D, manufacturing and operations disciplines. This work spans three well-known manufacturers of silicon-based memory chips and gallium nitride power electronic products – Cypress Semiconductor, International Rectifier and Infineon Technologies. John’s career began with 7 years at startup Spinnaker Semiconductor, where he oversaw R&D, joint-development projects and its Intellectual Property program. John has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, with a specialization in synthetic diamond processes.
