|
Behrooz Abdi
Chairman
Mr. Abdi, President and CEO at RMI, a seasoned veteran with over 22 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, has a proven track record of growing profitable businesses at Qualcomm, Inc. (NasdaqGS:QCOM) and Motorola SPS (now Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.). Prior to his appointment at RMI, Mr. Abdi held the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager of Qualcomm’s CDMA Technologies (QCT). During his tenure, QCT became the driving force behind the transition to 65nm technologies, successfully acquired and integrated several product and technology companies and moved into the top ten list of semiconductor companies.
Prior to joining Qualcomm, Mr. Abdi held leadership and engineering positions of increasing responsibility at Motorola in its Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS). His last role at Motorola was Vice President and General Manager for the radio products division, in charge of RF and mixed signal ICs for the wireless mobile market, where he led Motorola to its number one market position in RF ICs. Mr. Abdi holds 14 patents with several more pending. He received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Montana State University and his Master degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology
back to top
Yossi Cohen
President & CEO
Mr. Cohen comes to Symwave after more than 10 years of successful management roles at Broadcom, and most recently managed over 1,000 engineers as Senior Vice President and Group General Manager of the Mobile Platforms Group. Before the Mobile Platforms Group, he was Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom’s Bluetooth Business Unit, responsible for its massive growth into the PC, cell phones, gaming and peripheral segments. Prior to growing the Bluetooth unit, he initiated the company’s Gigabit controller business and helped drive it to be the market leader within its category. Earlier on, Mr. Cohen helped drive a number of other successful businesses at Broadcom, including Fast and Gigabit Ethernet transceivers and switches. Mr. Cohen also gained valuable M&A experience while at Broadcom, driving or participating in eight strategic acquisitions totaling several billion dollars. Prior to joining Broadcom, Mr. Cohen held various management positions at National Semiconductor. Mr. Cohen holds a BSEE degree from The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
back to top
Christopher Thomas
CTO
Christopher Thomas has over 10 years of experience and leadership in the semiconductor industry and has 11 patents issued or pending. Mr. Thomas worked for Conexant Systems in the Digital Infotainment division, focusing on Audio and Video products for the PC and set-top box market, and in Motorola’s Core Technology Group, developing wireless baseband ICs for handset, pager, and Bluetooth products.
back to top
Dave Furneaux
Investor
Dave Furneaux has over 15 years of experience in founding and investing in some of the most highly successful technology and investment companies in the industry. As a founder and Managing General Partner of Kodiak, Dave sets the strategy and growth initiatives for the firm. He has spent his career investing across the information technology landscape. Previously, he was a founding investor in a number of very successful companies including Extreme Packet Devices, (acquired by PMC-Sierra), Philsar, (acquired by Conexant) and Skystone Systems, (acquired by Cisco). In addition, he was an early investor in Solidum Systems, (acquired by IDT), and in Telica Systems, (acquired by Lucent). He also was an active early investor in AuroraNetics (acquired by Cisco) and a formation investor in Watchfire (acquired by IBM). Earlier in his career, Dave was a member of the early team at Chrysalis Symbolic Design, a semiconductor design company, and was responsible for directing east coast and major account sales. The company was later acquired by Synopsys. Prior to that, he was a telecommunications analyst with the National Conference. Dave holds a B.A. from Colorado College, Phi Beta Kappa.
back to top
Faysal Sohail
Investor
Faysal Sohail joined CMEA Ventures in 2002 as a General Partner. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Alien Technology, Applied Wave Research, and Inovys Corporation. Mr. Sohail brings with him more than a decade of senior executive experience in engineering, marketing and business development. He was CEO of Cadabra Design Automation and managed its acquisition by Numerical Technologies (NMTC) where he served as Sr. Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations. Prior to Numerical Technologies, Mr. Sohail was Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy for Synopsys Inc. (SNPS). In 1990, he founded Silicon Architects, which was acquired by Synopsys in 1995.
back to top
Christine King
President & CEO - SMSC
Christine King joined SMSC in October 2008 in the role of President and Chief Executive Officer. Most recently, Ms. King served as CEO of AMI Semiconductor (AMIS) for six years prior to the company’s merger with ON Semiconductor Corporation. Earlier, Christine King served as Vice President of Semiconductor Products for IBM Microelectronics and Vice President of the Networking Technology Business Unit. Ms. King also served as Vice President of Marketing and Field Engineering and Manager of ASIC Products at IBM earlier in her tenure with the company. She serves on the boards of Atheros Communications, Inc., Open-Silicon, Inc. and Idaho Power Company. Ms. King earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
back to top
Itzhak Gurantz, PhD
Advisor
Dr. Gurantz has more than 30 years of experience in leading teams that have developed first-generation communications solutions across nearly every broadband medium. Dr. Gurantz began his career at Linkabit Corporation prior to co-founding ComStream in 1984. At Comstream, Dr. Gurantz led engineering developments that were key to enabling the product launch of DSS (DIRECTV), DVB (DISH), Digital MMDS TeleTV/Americast, digital cable (AT&T), and cable modems (3COM). After the sale of ComStream’s digital consumer chip unit to Rockwell Semiconductor in 1997, Dr. Gurantz served as Vice President of Engineering for Rockwell (now Conexant) in their Digital Infotainment Division. Itzhak is the Chairman, Founder, and Former CEO of Entropic Communications, which is a co-founder and the developer of the technology for the Multi-Media over Coax Alliance (MoCA). This technology utilizes the existing home coaxial cable to enable high speed multimedia home networking enabling applications such as multi-room DVR. Entropic has received strategic investment from AOL Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, Panasonic, Motorola, Cisco, Intel, EchoStar, and Verizon. Dr. Gurantz’s B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering degrees were received from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel and he received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
back to top
|
