Wolfgang Black, PhD

“Anyone who finds them in a position to work with Wolfgang would be missing out on the opportunity if they did not. It was my pleasure to work for Wolfgang, among 3 others, during my time at JUUL Labs where he demonstrated an innate ability to motivate, collaborate, and incentivize those working for him and working with him. Wolfgang was my manager early in my career and even though I had little experience, comparatively speaking, he worked alongside me as a player-coach, never once making me feel that he was above the work he asked for my help with or that he was not invested in it. What stands out the most is the way he approached and addressed conflict and feedback with me. Once when I had over committed myself to too many requests and was not going to meet the deadlines, Wolfgang approached me and coached me on how to handle deadline slippage through providing proper notice and increasing visibility to prevent over committing myself and my resources and to prevent me from experiencing burnout. The way in which he approached this was both professional, helping me and my shareholders to understand the situation and work balance, but also personal in that I felt supported and part of the team. He helped me understand why it was happening and helped me put in place a new protocol to protect my time and avoid the issue in the future. This was crucial for me to learn at an early point in my career. During my time working with Wolfgang our team was focused on Thermal performance and Simulations validation. When evaluating a complex product with multiple matter phases (multi-physics of fluids and gases), fast reaction times, and microfluidic forces at play this was a hugely cross functional effort. We would regularly meet and discuss with; firmware, to confirm that the control laws in place were correct for the different heater types; chemistry, to gather and help prepare fluid for testing; and Electrical and Battery teams, to confirm optimum conditions for testing and how performance may vary. There was a lot of coordinating, collaboration, and competing ideas that needed to be evaluated and Wolfgang handled it all with humility and poise. In addition to this endeavor, we also launched research projects that continued through COVID with both of us going to extreme lengths to continue the experimentation and development, finding places to work outside, bringing lab tools and equipment, a whole production in pursuit of science. I genuinely miss the days when we would work together, and I cannot recommend Wolfgang enough. 12/10, Would recommend to a friend.”

“Wolfgang is an exceptional young man that I had the opportunity to work with @ Juul Labs. We was part of the CFD and Aerosol Sciences team, but that was only a title. Wolfgang was into everything, just about every facet of R&D had his fingerprints on it. He always encouraged experimentation and learning, he always empowered and encouraged his collogues to ask tough science related questions, and always engendered and fostered an environment of scientific discovery and invention. I was one of those curious souls that Wolfgang touched, as he encouraged me to formally set forth ideas and outlines of new product ideas and new technologies. Wolfgang is listed as co-inventor on 4 provisional patent submissions during my time with Juul for new product ideas and technologies, and it was his energy, coaching and wisdom that helped them to become a reality. Wolfgang takes a holistic approach to a project, he investigates every avenue to arrive at a solution path, and then once a course is charted, data, data, data, test, test, test! It is very tough to pigeon-hole Wolfgang, his work style and knowledge base is so fluid, he can mold his skillset to match any program or project, and that is what makes him truly a one of kind. ”