Dr. Pawan Shrestha

Dr. Pawan Shrestha is a Nepali-British optical engineer and entrepreneur whose decade of research at the University of Cambridge's Centre for Photonic Devices and Sensors produced a fundamental advance in nanophotonic lens technology. A former Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow, he spent years developing ultra-thin lenses capable of projecting digital images directly onto the retina — solving the vergence-accommodation conflict that causes nausea and disorientation in current AR and VR headsets.

In 2022, he co-founded AllFocal Optics (formerly Lark Optics) as CEO, spinning the technology out of Cambridge's Department of Engineering alongside Professor Daping Chu and Dr. Xin Chang. AllFocal's nanophotonic lenses are compatible with any display type — LCD, OLED, and others — and maintain constant focus regardless of how the user's eyes adjust to the surrounding environment. This removes a core barrier to mass adoption of extended reality hardware and opens applications across automotive heads-up displays, aerospace, medical smart glasses, and consumer XR devices.

In November 2024, AllFocal raised $5.3 million in seed funding led by Speedinvest, including Innovate UK grants, and announced trials with Jaguar Land Rover. Tech veteran Dr. Ash Salusbury, formerly Microsoft's VP of Technology and leader of Meta's AR programme, joined as company Chair — a strong validation of the platform's potential to reshape the XR industry.