Jim Von Ehr is the Founder of Zyvex Labs, LLC. He is also Chairman of the Board of Zyvex Performance Materials, Inc. and Managing Director of Zycraft Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) and Gray Tiger Holdings Ltd. (Hong Kong). Before founding Zyvex Corporation in 1997, Jim was the founder, president, chairman and CEO of Altsys Corporation, which developed FreeHand and Fontographer, the first commercially available PostScript drawing program. Altsys was sold to Macromedia in 1995, where he held a seat on the Board of Directors for nearly four years

In 2003, Jim testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for Bill S.189 (The 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act) and was invited to the Oval Office to be present when President Bush signed the Bill into law on December 3, 2003. He was also an invited member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group (NTAG) to the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Jim received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2003), the Ernest Randall Economic Development Leadership Award from the Richardson (Texas) Chamber of Commerce (2004), Richardson’s Citizen of the Year (2008), and Tech America’s “Texas Legend” award (2009).

Jim has a BS in Computer Science from Michigan State University and an MS in Mathematical Sciences (Computer Science) from the University of Texas at Dallas. In 2004, he was awarded Distinguished Alumni awards from both universities and in 2006 he was awarded the Computer Science and Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award and the Claud Erickson Award (Michigan State University’s highest Engineering Alumni award).

  • Founder, Zyvex group of companies. (1997), Zycraft (2011), Gray Tiger Holdings (2013)
  • VP of Product Development/Java, and Director of Macromedia. Managed a small group defining Java-based next-generation multimedia authoring tools for the Internet, leading to web authoring tool DreamWeaver. (1996–1997)
  • Vice President & General Manager, Digital Arts Group, and Director of Macromedia. Managed the former Altsys group developing the desktop publishing programs FreeHand, Fontographer, and xRes. (1995–1996)
  • CEO and Chairman of Tetragon. Tetragon was a spin-off of Altsys Corporation, developing games originally for the 3DO game system, and the Sony PlayStation. (1993–1995)
  • President, Renner Plaza Properties: property management company created to own and manage commercial real estate. (1992–2000)
  • President, Chairman & CEO, Altsys Corporation. Founded Altsys to develop graphics applications for personal computers. After developing several major products, which achieved total worldwide sales of over $100M in the company’s 10 year history, the company was sold to Macromedia in January 1995. (1984–1995)
  • Manager in Design Automation Department, Texas Instruments, and Senior Member of Technical Staff. Managed a group that developed three generations of CAD tools for integrated circuit layout over an 11 year period. (1973–1984)
  • New Buffalo High School (1968)
  • BS in Computer Science from Michigan State University (1972)
  • MS in Mathematical Sciences (Computer Science), University of Texas at Dallas (1982)
  • Tech America’s “Texas Legend” Award (2009)
  • Richardson Texas Citizen of the Year (2008)
  • Collin County: People of Influence (2008)
  • Computer Science and Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award: Michigan State University (2006)
  • Claud Erickson Award: Michigan State University (2006)
  • Ernest Randall Economic Development Leadership Award: Richardson TX Chamber of Commerce (2004)
  • Distinguished Alumni Award: Michigan State University (2004)
  • Distinguished Alumni Award: University of Texas at Dallas (2004)
  • Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2003)
  • 5,361,333: System and method for generating self-overlapping calligraphic images
  • 5,353,396: System and method for generating complex calligraphic curves
  • 5,434,959: System and method of generating variable width lines within a graphics system
  • 5,467,443: System and method for automatically generating derived graphics elements
  • 5,594,855: System and method for generating real-time calligraphic curves
  • 6,887,450: Directional assembly of carbon nanotube strings
  • 6,987,277: System and method for picking and placing of nanoscale objects utilizing differences in chemical and physical binding forces
  • Contributing author, “Commercializing Micro-Nanotechnology Products” edited by David Tolfree and Mark J. Jackson (2008)
  • Author of numerous Zyvex white papers and co-author of several technical papers
  • Co-author of paper titled “Assembler Construction by Proximal Probe” presented at the Fifth Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology (1997)
  • Contributing author, “Real World PostScript,” edited by Steve Roth (1998)
  • Puzzle and sound effects designer of the 3DO videogame Gridders (1994)
  • Developer of Rollup, a font utility for building Japanese, Chinese, and Korean typefaces (1993)
  • Co-developer of the program Aldus FreeHand, a powerful, professional illustration program for the Macintosh and Windows (1987)
  • Instigator and principal author of the Encapsulated PostScript File Format (EPSF) specification used to exchange graphics data between desktop publishing applications (1987)
  • Co-developer of the program Fontographer, a PostScript font editor for the Macintosh, which was the first commercially available PostScript drawing program (1986)
  • Co-developer of the program FONTastic, a bitmap font editor for the Macintosh (1985)
  • Developer of two games for the Texas Instruments Home Computer: Sneggit and Slymoids (1983)