​Dr. Vladimir Krstic is the founder and CEO of Functional Materials Manufacturing Inc. since its inception in 2000 and currently supports manufacturing and R&D activity. Dr. Krstic has been involved in managing government and private sector funded projects for more than 25 years as a professor at Queen’s until 2018 as well as in the private sector as current CEO of FMM Inc. He has successfully completed over 30 different projects funded by various federal and provincial programs, as well as private sector companies; these include projects funded by NSERC, OCE (MMO), National Research Council of Canada, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Trans Canada Pipelines, Lavalin, General Motors, Christie Digital, Huys Industries among others. While at Queens’s from 1999 to 2004, Dr. Krstic served as Project Director for a NATO Science for Peace program on “Developing Nanocrystalline High Melting Temperature Compounds Based on Carbides, Nitrides and Borides and Their Composites”. This was a multinational project involving more than 20 researchers from Canada, USA, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Dr. Krstic was the founder and Director (from 2001 to 2008) of the Centre for Manufacturing of Advanced Ceramic and Nanomaterials involving four universities (University of Toronto, McGill, Queen’s, Royal Military College) and one College (Niagara College) as well as a number of private sector companies. He also managed one of the largest CFI projects at Queen’s University with a budget of more than $8 million involving researchers from five different universities. With over 40 different types of equipment and investments of more than $16 million, The Centre for Manufacturing of Advanced Ceramics and Nanomaterials was rated as one of five best equipped centres in the world in the area of ceramic processing and property development. Over the last 21 years at Queen’s, Dr. Krstic has built a strong research and educational program both in functional and structural ceramics. Dr. Krstic has over 30 years of experience in ceramic powder synthesis, sintering and properties development. He has been responsible for the development of a number of processes for the synthesis of high purity, submicron size ceramic powders suitable for the fabrication of high performance ceramics including processes for the synthesis and sintering/densification of various carbides and borides including those for SiC, B4C and all transition metal carbides and borides. Over the last 20 years, Krstic has built a strong research team involved in the processing of high toughness, high strength and hardness ceramics which is one of the major interests of his research efforts at the present time. The applicant is also founder of the Centre for Manufacturing of Advanced Ceramics and Nanomaterials with state-of-the-art facility for powder synthesis, consolidation and properties characterization and testing.