Dr. Ton Van Mol

Ton van Mol graduated with honors from Eindhoven University of Technology in Chemical Technology in 1997, and received his PhD in the area of Thin film technology in 2001. He worked at Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore) as visiting scientist and joined TNO in 2003. In 2005, Ton helped set-up the open innovation initiative between IMEC and TNO called Holst Centre, where he became managing director in January 2015. In his role as MD of Holst Centre, Ton helped setup 10 spin off companies and helped grow Holst Centre from 75 to 130 R&D specialists in 2026.

In 2022, Ton initiated and is currently also managing director of PITC, the photonic integration technology centre, a strategic collaboration between TNO/Holst Centre, University of Technology Eindhoven, University of Twente, and PhotonDelta. PITC aims to help industrial companies in their development goals for integrated photonics technology through shared research programs. In 2025, the PITC partners became part of PIXEurope, the EU pilot line initiative, and Ton is leading the efforts of setting up a pilot line for 6 inch InP photonic chips with a capacity of 10.000 wafers/year.