A technology industry veteran, Dr. Karl Schubert has a proven track record of developing leading-edge hardware, software and combined product families and delivering them to existing and new market areas.  Karl is presently Vice President of Research and Development and Chief Technology Officer for Lifetouch, Inc., the leader in school, church, yearbook and portrait photography. 

Before joining Lifetouch, Karl was Chief Technology Officer at Xiotech Corporation in Eden Prairie, MN.  At Xiotech, he was responsible for the corporate technology strategy and business development.  Karl also served as a technology consultant to start-up companies associated with Austin Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Sierra Ventures and was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Austin Ventures.  Prior to those roles, he was responsible for driving technology, engineering, and operations teams to produce the first enterprise-class, 4D scalable, NAS subsystem.  As VP and CTO of Dell Inc., he was the architect behind Dell’s entry into the storage business and was responsible for guiding the storage practice through its first several billion dollars of revenue.  Karl spent 14 years at IBM, during which time he created the company’s OEM open storage subsystems unit.

Karl has authored two books and has been awarded several patents for early work in storage systems architecture, storage area networks and other technology areas.  Karl received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering in 1975 and his Master’s degree, also in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Kentucky.  He returned to Arkansas to complete his Doctorate in engineering in 1983.  In April 2008, Karl received the University of Arkansas College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award and was elected to and inducted into the University of Arkansas Academy of Chemical Engineers.