Bulent Basol
PhD-EE (UCLA) - CEO/Co-Founder
Bulent is a technologist and entrepreneur who participated in several hi-tech start-ups (ISET, NuTool, SoloPower) as founder/VP/CTO for over 30 years. These projects attracted >$200 million in strategic/VC and >$20 million in government funding and resulted in successful M&A events. His expertise includes thin film devices, specifically solar cells, electronic materials, semiconductor processing and device physics. Bulent has over 167 issued US patents and over 100 publications on semiconductor devices, thin film processes and semiconductor processing tools.
Abhijeet (AJ) Joshi
PhD-EE (UCLA) - CTO/Co-Founder
AJ developed many aspects of the ALPro system/technology and worked with Simon Prussin (the inventor of the continuous anodic oxidation technique for differential Hall measurements). AJ’s expertise includes system integration, semiconductor processing, device physics, robotics and laser devices. He has over 30 publications, mostly on semiconductor characterization approaches. AJ’s previous start-up, TheiaScientific Corp., developed micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) based equipment for materials characterization and high-energy light-sources. He has 6 patent applications.
Michael Gough
MBA (Santa Clara) - CFO
Michael holds a tenured faculty position at DeAnza College in Accounting and Business and is a Principal of Gough and Associates, a firm that provides CFO services to startup companies. In the past, he was CFO of NuTool Inc and Invest in Yourself, LLC, and worked in high technology in finance and contracts and has participated in successful mergers and an IPO. He holds a CPA license; is a board member of a public company and sits on the audit committee.
Albert Boro
Attorney - Board Member
Al is an attorney with 30 years of experience in managing and litigating complex legal matters in business and other areas. He received his law degree as well as a Master of Public Policy and a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley. He presently leads the Boro Law Firm in San Francisco. His prior positions include Sr. VP/General Counsel/Board Secretary at SoloPower, Partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, and law clerk to the US Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. He is a past Chair of the Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law Section of the California State Bar and a member of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association and the Legal Ethics Committee of the Bar Association of San Francisco.
Daniel Armbrust
MS (RPI) - Advisor
Daniel is a co-founder of Silicon Catalyst, the industry’s first incubator for semiconductor solutions startups. Silicon Catalyst is addressing the challenges faced by early stage start-ups progressing from concept to prototype by providing funding, mentoring and technical services from industry stakeholders. Silicon Catalyst’s initial location is in Silicon Valley and expects to collaborate with regional partners to support innovative semiconductor startups globally. Daniel served as President and Chief Executive Officer of SEMATECH for five years with responsibility for the consortium’s advanced technology R&D and manufacturing collaboration programs. SEMATECH’s members included the leading semiconductor manufacturer’s including Intel, TSMC, Samsung and Globalfoundries along with over 70 equipment and materials companies. Armbrust previously held various technical, management and executive positions for over 25 years at IBM, culminating in his tenure as Vice President of 300mm Semiconductor Operations.
Izak Bencuya
PhD-EE (Yale), MBA (Berkeley) - Advisor
Izak is a consultant and entrepreneur with over 25 years of electronics industry experience. He serves on the boards of several companies, some public. Previous positions include CEO at Deeya Energy and Executive VP at Fairchild Semiconductor where he grew the business of the power devices group to over $900M/yr. He has 22 issued US patents.
John O. Borland
MS (MIT) - Advisor
John is President of J.O.B. Technologies a strategic technical marketing consulting company providing service to the semiconductor industry. He was Director of Operations at Advanced Integrated Photonics responsible for process/device improvements. As the Director of Advanced Business Development at Varian he pioneered beam-line and plasma ultra-shallow junction formation processes. At Genus he was Vice President of Strategic Technology, developing high energy implantation for CMOS applications. At Applied Materials he developed CMOS single wafer epi, selective epi and poly/amorphous deposition techniques and equipment designs. At National Semiconductor he developed CMOS bulk and epi intrinsic gettering and latch-up immunity techniques. John published over 145 papers and has 6 patents. He is a senior member of IEEE, IEEE Hawaii section chair and the chair of the Hawaii Electron Device Society. He is also on the advisory committee for the IEEE International Workshop on Junction Technology and a member of the Electrochemical Society. He co-organized several ECS technical conferences/symposiums.
Ali Keshavarzi
PhD-EE (Purdue) - Advisor
Ali is a technology visionary and a leader who has been at the forefront of technology innovation with a track record of delivering critical process technologies, devices, circuits, SoCs, and modules to the semiconductor industry. Most recently Ali was the Vice President of R&D and a Fellow at Cypress Semiconductor. He has had various senior R&D roles at Intel, TSMC, and GLOBALFOUNDRIES. He is the founder of Leading Edge Research LLC. He has over 60 U.S. patents, over 70 publications, has received best-paper and best-panel awards at ISSCC, most paper citation awards from DAC and IEDM. He has served in TPC of IEDM and ISSCC and has been the general chair of ISLPED. He received the prestigious Intel Achievement Award. Ali was awarded a distinguished Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineer of Purdue University.
Sandeep Mehta
MS-EE (Cleveland State) - Head of Technology Marketing and Business Development
Sandeep is an accomplished semiconductor technologist and business leader with excellent track record for driving development of state-of-the-art semiconductor processing equipment, enabling processes and metrology solutions for device makers. In his over 35 year career in the industry he served as the Vice President at Materials Analysis Technology (MA-tek) (Taiwan), President and GM at Advanced Ion Beam Technology (Taiwan), Director of epitaxy at ASM America, Senior Director at Axcelis Technologies, and Senior Director at Varian Semiconductor. In these capacities Sandeep was heavily involved with technology marketing, technology innovation, business revival, product development and large scale business growth. Sandeep has 8 patents and over 40 publications.
Dave Millman
(MIT) - Advisor
Dave is CEO of BizDev.Global, which works with Silicon Valley startups to find their target market and accelerate sales. For more than 30 years, he has guided successful launches for dozens of semiconductor, internet, software and networking products. A popular faculty member at technology incubators, Dave’s strength is identifying the customer segment that has the most pressing need for a new technology product, and launching sales into that market.
David Hung-I Su
PhD-ChemE (Stanford) - Advisor
David Su is an Adjunct Professor of the Department of Engineering and Systems Science at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. He retired from TSMC where he was Director of the Failure Analysis Division in charge of reliability-related failure analysis, materials and chemical analysis from 2000 until late 2018. David is currently an honorary member of the board of directors of the Microscopy Society of Taiwan, and member of the editorial board of the Electronic Device Failure Analysis magazine. Prior to joining TSMC, he was Director of TEM and FIB Technology Development at Accurel Systems and TEM Specialist at the Materials Analysis Group of Philips Semiconductors. He was a board member of the Electronic Device and Failure Analysis Society of the U. S. (2014-2016) and Chair of the Sematech Integrated-Circuit Failure Analysis Council (2013). He was also chairman of the 2010 IRPS Failure Analysis Technical Program and International Chair for ISTFA 2010, 2011 and International Co-Chair in 2013.