Transducers 2021 | 20-25 June 2021

Industry Session 1: Startup Stories
Monday, 21 June, 14:05 - 14:35 GMT/UTC

This new industry event shares three startup stories to inspire and educate the Transducers community. A Q&A session follows the presentations.

Bassam Saadany, CTO/COO and Co-Founder
Si-Ware, USA

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Bassam Saadany, CTO/COO and co-founder of Si-Ware Systems. Bringing MEMS products to market, at Si-Ware his group developed the world's first single-chip FT spectrometer. With more than 25 years of experience in photonics and semiconductor industry, his background includes R&D as well as business management.

He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt and the Ph.D. in MEMS and Nanostructures from the University of Paris XI, France. Bassam is the principal inventor of NeoSpectraTM technology enabling micro fabrication of optical systems on a single chip.

Luca Verre, CEO and Founder
Prophesee, FRANCE

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Luca Verre holds a double first-class MSc in Physics, Electronic and Industrial Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and Ecole Centrale and an MBA from INSEAD.

Luca has extensive international management experience and a background in the automotive and electronics industries. His experience includes project and product management, marketing and business development roles at Schneider Electric. Prior to Schneider Electric, Luca worked as an engineer with Toyota and Altis Semiconductor as well as a Research Assistant in Photonics at the Imperial College of London.

Prof. Sunghoon Kwon, CEO and Founder
QuantaMatrix, KOREA

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Dr. Sunghoon Kwon is the founder and CEO of QuantaMatrix which provides a life-saving diagnostic instrument in the field of clinical microbiology. His work combines his training in medicine, biology, and engineering to invent innovative technologies that help life scientists. He believes important scientific discovery and medical innovation start with development of innovative tools. His research area includes rapid antibiogram, DNA synthesis, single cell multiomics, and next generation immune imaging. Dr. Kwon is also a Professor of Electrical Engineering/Medicine at the Seoul National University in Korea, leading the Biophotonics and Nanoengineering Laboratory. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering and MS in Medical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1998 and 2000. He received his Ph.D in Bioengineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004.

Moderator

Paul Carey, Director
MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), USA

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Paul Carey joined SEMI in April this year as the Director of the MEMS and Sensors Industry Group (MSIG). He has over 20 years of experience in semiconductor device, process, and equipment optimization while working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Applied Materials, and dpiX. He was a co-founder of his own semiconductor start-up company, FlexICs, out of LLNL. FlexICs's business plan proposed to make flexible active-matrix OLED backplanes for cellphone displays. Although FlexICs did not succeed, very similar technology is used in the flexible cellphone displays first commercialized by Samsung.

He obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Industry Session 2: Industry Panel Discussion - Sensors for Smart Cities
Tuesday, 22 June, 07:00 - 07:30 GMT/UTC

Join this exciting discussion with a panel of industry leaders as we explore the rapidly growing Smart Cities Sector and the sensors that will enable safe, comfortable, energy efficient living for billions of urban dwellers.

Sreenivasa Rao, Head of Gas and Environmental Sensors
InvenSense, a TDK Group Company, USA

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Dr. Sreeni Rao is a Senior Director at TDK responsible for TDK Corp's Gas and Environmental Sensing products and business. He has been in the MEMS sensing and semiconductor sector for the last 25 years, and has previously held technical and business leadership positions at Texas Instruments, IBM, Analog Devices, and Qualtre, Inc. He has a PhD in EE from University of California, Irvine and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Felix Hoehne, Director Business Development
Sensirion, SWITZERLAND

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Felix Hoehne has been the Director of Business Development Sensor Innovation at Sensirion since 2018. After joining the group in 2013, he held various positions in R&D and product management for Sensirion's multipixel gas sensor. Before joining Sensirion, Felix worked for NEC and RIKEN in Japan as well as Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. He studied physics at TU Munich as well as Saint Petersburg and holds a PhD in semiconductor physics from the Walter-Schottky Institut, Munich.

When he is not thinking about sensors, Felix is enjoying playing with his three children and trying to squeeze-in some time for football and the bass guitar.

Kush Mishra, CTO and COO
SenRa, INDIA

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Kush Mishra is the CTO and COO at SenRa and is responsible for new product development, organisational deliveries, P&L ownership and strategic partner ecosystem growth. As a visionary entrepreneur and corporate leader in Fortune 500 companies, Kush has launched several consumer IoT products in the Global markets. He is one of the earliest evangelist of the IoT revolution in India and has authored several research publications in advanced materials and patents in the field of IoT electronics and physics and data driven algorithms. He is an active contributor to the policy and standards development for Government's Digital India initiative. Kush obtained his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from IIT Roorkee and MBA from Indian School of Business. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and frequently visits academic institutions to engage with students and faculty as an industry expert.

Moderator

Tim Brosnihan, Executive Director
MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), USA

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Tim Brosnihan currently serves as Executive Director of the MEMS and Sensors Industry Group (MSIG) at SEMI. The MSIG consortia represents hundreds of companies across the world, furthering the advancement of the MEMS and sensors ecosystem critical to smart devices, big data and IoT. With a goal of connecting companies, technologists and business leaders to collaborate and innovate, MSIG is positioned to promote and grow the global MEMS and sensors supply chain, helping the industry thrive. Prior to joining SEMI, Tim held various management roles in the semiconductor and MEMS industry at Analog Devices, Qualcomm, and Cirrus Logic. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and a B.S in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Industry Session 3: MEMS & Sensors Industry Group Emerging Leaders and Student Engagement Committee Joint Event
Wednesday, 23 June, 00:00 - 00:30 GMT/UTC

For the first time ever, an international student committee teamed with the Industry Events committee to create a special event where an Emerging Leaders panel offers insights and answers questions from students and early-career professionals. A 30-minute discussion panel will be held with three young leaders from industry. The discussion will include emerging new technologies for the future, dealing with global challenges, and advice and tips for MEMS students. Questions from the audience will be accepted. This is a great opportunity to interact with successful MEMS engineers. Don't miss it!

Eugene Hwang, Sr. Sensor Development Engineer
SpaceX, USA

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In 2012 Dr. Robert Hennessy obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in Roger Howe's research group. In his Ph.D. research, Robert developed a Vacuum Encapsulated Resonator for Humidity Measurements. Throughout his Ph.D. research, Robert did internships and consulting at Bosch, ADI and Silicon Clock.

After graduation, Robert joined TDK as a MEMS design engineer where his track record of industry-leading products has earned him four promotions in 8 years: Sr Designer, Staff Designer, Manager and now Sr. Manager MEMS Design. An accomplished designer in his own right, Robert co-designed a new gyro architecture that resulted in a Tier-1 customer design in for their highest volume product.

As a manager, Robert built a gyro design team by recruiting promising young talent and training them up to be a world class group with a strong track record of success. His team is responsible for the highly successful ICM 42XXX family of inertial products. Robert continues to develop his engineers, growing them in capable, well respected project leads.

Looking forward, Robert is excited for the development of high-end gyroscopes to enable new applications including virtual reality and autonomous vehicles. Additionally, he is interested in the application of machine learning to improve sensor performance and fusion.

Robert Hennessy, Sr. Manager MEMS Design
InvenSense, a TDK Group Company, USA

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In 2011 Dr. Eugene Hwang obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical and computer Engineering from Cornell University in Sunil Bhave's research group. His Ph.D. research was on electrostatic resonators for timing applications, and he also established a strong background in bulk acoustic wave resonators.

Eugene then joined Analog Devices Micromachined Products Division in Wilmington, MA where he worked as a product engineer. He was lead product engineer on the XRS290 ultra-low noise 2-axis gyro, which is still the key component in ADI's very successful IMU systems. ADIS 1647X and 1649X series IMUs have a widely adopted in drones, aviation and even John Deer industrial farming systems. As Product Engineer, Eugen also lead the transfer of AD's in-house MEMS fabrication technology to TSMC. He qualified that process on the ADXL345, which is ADI's highest grossing accelerometer.

Eugen then joined the MEMS design Team and worked on a project to develop novel piezoelectric /and piezomagnetic transduction mechanism for sensors. This work won Eugen the 2015 MSIG Designer of the year award.

His latest product is the ADXRS295 ultra-noise gyroscope, ADI's 2020 best-yet gyro for roll and pitch. With a promotion to System Architect, Eugene incorporated sensor devices with other ADI systems and analysis algorithms to create autonomous driving systems. Eugene looks forward to creating an exciting, high tech product line focused on enabling level-5 autonomous vehicles.

Eugene is now with SpaceX as Sr. Sensor Development Engineer.

Eugene has 3 issues and 3 pending patents and over 10 publications. He has received best paper and best workshop awards at ADI's internal Global Technology Conference and has been an invited speaker at Transducers Research Foundation workshops.

Igino Padovani, Sr. Manager Business Development
Robert Bosch, USA

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Igino Padovani is in charge of Business Development in North America for the Optical Microsystems product line at Bosch. In his role, he's contributing to development of consumer electronics: AR smartglasses. As the point of contact for all major consumer OEMs in US, Igino is driving the promotion of the Bosch Lightdrive laser scanner, a key enabling technology for AR displays.

In the previous years at Bosch, Igino helped grow the Automotive Electronics business in North America by winning designs for Body Electronics components at the emerging Electric Vehicle makers. Those business awards are of multi-million-dollar total value. Prior to that, Igino led Technology Scouting and Business Development for the Bio and Environmental sensors program. In such capacity he started and drove IP licensing and M&A activities.

Before joining Bosch in 2016, Igino spent 5 years at Maxim Integrated where he was one of the early members of the Sensing Solutions Business Unit. The Sensing Solution business unit built a MEMS Inertial Sensors product line from scratch in less than 3 years, gaining business awards both in the consumer and in the automotive infotainment space. After a change in Maxim's company strategy, the Sensing Solution BU was sold to Hanking electronics.

Before Maxim, Igino worked as a design engineer at STMicroelectronics. He helped create the STM MEMS Microphone product line, with his work on system architecture and ASIC design. Igino's MEMS microphones won notable programs such as the iPad Air and generated multi-million-dollar revenues.

During his career, Igino has authored and co-authored more than 15 patents in Sensors and Systems.

Moderators

Andrea Vergara, Ph.D. Student
Tohoku University, JAPAN

Gerardo Gonzalez, Ph.D. Student
University of Freiburg, GERMANY

Questions regarding the panel? Please contact Andrea Vergara at vergara@transducers2021.org.