Executive Team

Dr. Dinu has spent approximately 25 years in international executive positions within the TMT industry working for privately held start-ups, middle-cap companies, and large enterprises. In these roles, Dr. Dinu has been instrumental in launching and accelerating entities, building teams, large-scale fund raising, developing key alliances and technology partnerships, M&A activities, business development, financial management, global operations and sales and marketing. Dr. Dinu is managing partner of GigCapital Global, a serial issuer of Private-to-Public Equity (PPE) entities, also known as Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). Since inception in September of 2017 GigCapital Global (GIG) has issued and completed initial public offerings of six PPE entities, and completed combinations and taking public of five entities; using the PPE platforms; GIG1 combined in November 2019 with Kaleyra (NYSE: KLR), which was sold to Tata Communications in November 2023, GIG2 combined with UpHealth Holding in June 2021 (NYSE: UPH), GIG3 combined in May 2021 with Lightning eMotors (NYSE ZEV), GIG4 combined with BigBear in December 2021 (NYSE: BBAI), and GIG5 combined with QT-Imaging (NASDAQ: QTI) in February 2023.

Dr. Dinu serves as Chair of the Compliance Committee, and member of the Audit Committee and Compensation Committee of UpHealth, Inc. since March 2019, and as a member of the Board of Directors and a member of the Audit Committee of BigBear.ai. Dr. Dinu serves on the board of directors of NY Philharmonic since May 2023.

Dr. Dinu has held leadership positions at several other companies, including at IDT’s Optical Interconnects Division (as vice president and general manager), GigPeak (as executive vice president, chief operation officer, executive vice president of Global Sales and Marketing, and senior vice president of Global Sales and Marketing), Brazil-Photonics (as a director) and Lumera Corporation (as vice president of engineering). Dr. Dinu holds a B.Sc. in Physics and Ph.D. in Solid State Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Bucharest, and an Executive-M.B.A. from Stanford University. Dr. Dinu has an Audit Committee Certificate, Compensation Committee Certificate, as well as a Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School, Executive Education Program.

Mr. Jennings, who was appointed as Chief Financial Officer of QT Imaging in September 2025, is responsible for operational finance, financial reporting, budgeting and strategic planning, and treasury management.

Mr. Jennings has an accomplished history of financial, operational, and strategic leadership success within the digital healthcare and high technology industries. In an executive management career that spans close to 30 years, he has led two go-public transactions, completed various private and public financings, built and managed finance teams ranging up to 100 employees, and been integrally involved in 12 business acquisitions. Mr. Jennings most recently served as Acting Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer for UpHealth, Inc., a global digital health company. His earlier experience includes executive financial roles at eHealth, Inc., a NASDAQ-listed consumer online marketplace, and MetaCreations Corporation, a NASDAQ-listed developer of visual computing and graphics software and technologies.

Prior to launching his corporate career in 1996, Mr. Jennings was an Audit Manager at Ernst & Young, LLP, and has been a Certified Public Accountant in the State of California since 1992. Mr. Jennings earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics / Accounting from Claremont McKenna College in 1989.

Mr. Steve Choate, appointed as Chief Operations Officer at QT Imaging in March 2024, is responsible for managing the operations organization, ensuring quality, and fostering collaboration with internal, domestic, and international manufacturing partners.

With over 30 years of experience across diverse industries such as aerospace, space, semiconductor, and telecommunications, Mr. Choate has held key leadership positions and brings extensive expertise as a production operations leader with a focus on overseeing manufacturing activities, product development, and production releases. He served as the VP of Operations at GigOptix, where he oversaw manufacturing on a global scale, Director of Engineering at Teledyne Microwave Solutions, and as an account manager at Endwave, handling various customers in the RF milliwave transceivers space and managing offshore engineering teams.

Mr. Choate began his career at Lockheed Martin, progressing from a design engineer to a role in the program office, where he managed engineering development programs for remote satellite tracking stations. His academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from San Jose State University and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

For over three decades Mr. Pirshafiey has developed products and businesses for domestic and multinational firms. Mr. Pirshafiey’s creativity, innovative problem-solving skills, and entrepreneurial mindset have provided professional, technical, and business solutions to many start-ups and mature companies.

In 2014, Mr. Pirshafiey joined the QT Imaging startup company, where he led the technology group in production design and commercialization of the novel breast imaging modality, while further developing the technology for other imaging applications, including diagnostic imaging of human extremities, joints, infant imaging, and imaging internal organs. He led the technology team members—building a focused team of mechanical, electrical, software, science, and image reconstruction scientists. Additionally, Mr. Pirshafiey established the breast imaging device manufacturing team.

Mr. Pirshafiey has previously founded and managed two companies with the mission to provide sustainable practices to industries such as medical devices, automotive, aerospace, high-tech, consumer products, and robotics (brief client list: Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, Edwards Life Sciences, Autoliv, TRW). Mr. Pirshafiey has 18 inventions filed with the US patent office, holds a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering, and an MBA with specialization in Entrepreneurship.

On a personal note, Mr. Pirshafiey is a Multiengine Instrument Rated Commercial pilot, who enjoys sharing his passion of flying by being part of the Angle Flight West team. A group of volunteers and pilots, who provide free medical transportation to people in need.

Dr. Bilal Malik has over ten years of experience in research, development, and translation of medical devices, both in academia and industry. He is an expert in leading and directing efforts in image and data science and has a track record of successfully leading innovation for medical imaging products, directing research strategy, and navigating FDA pathways. As Chief Science Officer of QT Imaging, Dr. Malik led the R&D efforts behind the industry’s first-in-class transmission ultrasound breast scanner, from prototyping to FDA clearance and commercialization. As an imaging scientist at Genentech, he provides imaging scientific leadership in late-stage clinical trials in oncology.

Dr. Malik received his BS degree in engineering sciences from GIK Institute, Pakistan, and MS and PhD degrees in electrical and biomedical engineering from Texas A&M University. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers and over 60 conference presentations (h-index: 20). He is also a member of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) medical imaging study section (ISB-10), reviewing grant submissions by small businesses in the area of medical imaging.

My passion as a breast imager involves using safe and effective technology to diagnose breast cancer. I completed my radiology residency at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, MA in 1998 and a breast imaging fellowship at the Faulkner-Sagoff/BWH Breast Center in Boston in 1999. I spent my academic career working as a breast imager in various medical organizations including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center /Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Community Division. These years taught me a lot about the discipline of breast imaging and about the difficulties patients endure in their breast health journey. I learned many lessons, most importantly that patients have a say in what technologies they like and their expectations of the breast imaging experience. From the patient’s point of view, imaging should be comfortable, safe, stress-free, and results should be accurate.

With this in mind, I felt the desire to step beyond clinical work and use my experience as a breast imager to help develop a new breast imaging technology with scientists and engineers whose mission is to improve the breast imaging experience for patients, to try and offer an alternative in the current standard of care. Our performance as breast imagers is always limited by the technology available to us. This is the driving force that led me to QT Ultrasound 10 years ago as Chief Medical Officer and that’s why I’m grateful to return.

Returning to the publicly traded QT Imaging Holdings, Inc. as Chief Medical Officer, the mission of this dedicated group of professionals is clinical adoption and commercialization, as well as continued research & development for QTI as a safe, effective and cutting-edge alternative imaging modality for breast cancer diagnosis and management.