AESSENSE CORPORATION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Americas Sales
Chris is leading our US sales. Previously, he was Sr. Director of Sales and Marketing for Environics USA, a provider of sophisticated gas & vapor detection solutions for the military, 1st responder, safety and homeland security markets. Chris was also a key member of the RAE Systems team, helping to grow RAE's revenues from $1M/yr to nearly $100M/yr in the above mentioned markets. Chris has extensive experience teaching gas and vapor detection and has been a featured speaker at more than 100 international conferences. He has written numerous articles, papers and book chapters on gas detection in HazMat and industrial safety applications.
Dr. Wu has been developing technical and market solutions for LED based applications since 1973. As Founder and CEO of Leotek Electronics Corporation, he was responsible for identifying and developing emerging LED applications and the market for Leotek. He founded Leotek in 1993 and led his team through the design and development of many innovative and successful products. Leotek has now become the second largest LED traffic signal company in the world. Prior to founding Leotek, Chen Wu was Vice President of Advanced Technology (Taiwan) Corporation and Executive Vice President of Compound Semiconductors, Inc. in California. Dr. Wu is a member of IESNA (Illuminating Engineering Society, North America), IMSA (International Municipal Signal Association) and ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers). He has authored numerous technical publications in the area of optoelectronics and holds 26 patents related to LED applications.
Job Titles:
- Environmental Horticulture Department Chair, UC Davis
A professor at UC Davis since 1984, Dr. Lieth focuses primarily on the plant science of production of greenhouse and nursery crops and has authored hundreds of research papers in the field. Dr. Lieth also has extensive experience in photovoltaics, LED lighting, and nutrient sensing designed for vegetable and fruit crops. Prior to coming to UC Davis, he obtained his PhD in Biomathematics from North Carolina State University. Afterwards, he conducted postdoctoral research at Texas A&M University.
Job Titles:
- Department Chair of Protected Agriculture Science & Engineering, Nanjing Agriculture University
The winner of the Chinese National Science & Technology Progress Award, Dr. Shirong Guo serves on numerous boards and committees for his expertise in agricultural science. He has published over 360 SCI-level research papers and 8 books on indoor horticulture, soil-less cultivation, and mass indoor crop cultivation. He has led more than 70 international research projects and garnered over 12 scientific & technological achievements. Along with his duties as a professor, Dr. Guo serves as a director on many agriculture boards.
Job Titles:
- Emeritus Professor, Information Engineering Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong
- Professor of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Dr. Tony T. Lee is a Professor of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and an adjunct Professor of the Institute of Applied Mathematics of Chinese Academy of Science. Dr. Lee received his BSEE degree from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan in 1971, and his MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Polytechnic University in New York, in 1976 and 1977, respectively. From 1991 to 1993, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Polytechnic University of New York, Brooklyn, New York. He was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ, from 1977 to 1983, and Bellcore, currently Telcordia Technologies, Morristown, NJ, from 1983 to 1993. He is now serving as an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications, and an area Editor of Journal of Communication Networks.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Engineering
Hong's expertise is building data platforms, cloud services and applications for the collection, processing, analysis, and visualization of big data. Previous to joining AEssense, Hong had more than ten years of engineering management at Open X and TeleNav Inc., and prior to that, honed her software engineering skills at Nuance Communications, SeeCommerce, and Schlumberger. Hong has a M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science and was a Ph.D candidate in Computer Science at the University of Houston.
Jennifer has responsibility for the daily operation of the company. She has over 25 years of experience in high-tech business and engineering management. Prior to joining AEssense, Jennifer was an executive staff member in the CEO's office at RAE Systems, leading special and strategic programs. Prior to joining RAE Systems, she was a Principal at Pittiglio Rabin Todd and McGrath, now PricewaterhouseCoopers. Prior to that, she was Communication Systems Engineering Manager at TRW, now Northrup Grumman.
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner, Sycamore Ventures
Mr. To is the past Chairman of Sycamore Ventures, a venture capital firm with more than US$600 million under management. He has served on the Boards of Directors of both public and private corporations in the USA and Asia. Mr. To has invested or worked with numerous accomplished entrepreneurs, including founders of Celadon, Channel 18 of LA, Acer, Asustek and Home Inns, just to name a few. Citigroup, GIC of Singapore and Middle East pension funds are major limited partners of Sycamore. Previously, he was a Vice President of Citicorp Venture Capital and served as President of Citicorp Investments, Inc. He worked 16 years at Philips, RCA, AT&T and DEC in research and development, manufacturing and marketing. Mr. To received a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from the Wharton School.
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner of WR Hambrecht Ventures I and II
Lee Ting is Managing Partner of WR Hambrecht Ventures I and II, an affiliate of WR Hambrecht+Co, an investment bank based in San Francisco. Mr. Ting has served on the board of a number of companies, both public and private; the public companies include Lenovo Group, Microelectronics Technology Inc., and Neophotonics Inc. Mr. Ting is a retired executive of Hewlett Packard Co. (HP) where he served for more than thirty years. His last position at HP was Corporate Vice President and Managing Director of Worldwide Geographic Operations, where he was responsible for the company's operations in more than 120 countries. Mr. Ting obtained his BS in Electrical Engineering at Oregon State University and has completed the Stanford Executive Program.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Regional Management Team
- Vice President and General Manager, AEssense Europe, Middle East, & Africa
Michael has responsibility for the daily operation of the company's EMEA activities. He has over 20 years of experience in global business development. Prior to AEssense, Michael served as International Business Development Director at RAE Systems. He successfully established RAE Systems European headquarters in Copenhagen, Middle East headquarters in Dubai, and sales offices in The Netherland, France, Spain, UK, Australia, and India. Michael holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the Aalborg University and several courses in Business Administration at Marketing through Aarhus Handelshojsko le.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Marketing
Phil has 30 years of sales, marketing, and channel experience, and is known as the creator of the WEBENCH online design environment now owned by Texas Instruments. Previously, Phil held executive marketing positions at Infineon, TI, and National Semiconductor. With 8 patents in web technology, Phil is an expert in digital marketing and built his first web site in 1995. Phil holds an MBA from the University of Southern California and a BSEE from UC Davis.
Robert Chen - CEO, Founder, President
Bob is the founder of AEssense and also serves as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. He has a long history of building successful businesses in Silicon Valley. Prior to AEssense, he co-founded RAE Systems and AOT Corp., which were acquired by Honeywell and Hewlett-Packard respectively. Bob's industry experience also includes various engineering and management positions at General Motors, General Electric, Tektronix, Fairchild Semiconductor and Hewlett-Packard Company. Bob has a BSEE from National Taiwan Cheng-Kung University, a MSEE from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and Advanced Engineer Degree from Syracuse University. Bob was also a member of HBS OPM Class 18.
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer
- Our CFO
Stephen joined AEssense as our CFO in 2019. Stephen previously held CFO positions at both publicly-traded and private equity/venture-backed companies. His leadership experience in taking companies through growth opportunities serves him well at AEssense. His chief initiatives are to drive key metrics for revenue growth, effective cash management, and profitability. Most recently, Stephen was the CFO of LumaSense Technologies, a global provider of high performance sensing systems, software and SaaS/cloud based data analytics solutions. They were acquired by Advanced Energy. Prior to LumaSense, Stephen was the CFO of Agnity Global, Inventergy Global, Altair Nanotechnologies, and Penguin Computing. Stephen earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and Accounting from San Francisco State University.
Job Titles:
- Founder, Investor, Partner at Valley Inception LLC, Chairman of the Board at the Brookes Education Groups, President of Centro Automotive
A native of Ningbo, China, Ms. Xu arrived in Silicon Valley 25 years ago with a strong work ethic. In 1995, she embarked on her first major business venture by founding Silver Computing, the foundation for WebEx Communications. WebEx became a leading platform for corporate meetings which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007. Ms. Xu is the founder of Valley International Academy (VIA) and Canada's Dwight International School in Victoria, British Columbia. Her vision was proven yet again as Ms. Xu was a lead investor for Zoom Video Communications at the center of the work from home revolution for every remote employee in today's challenging environment.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Regional Management Team
- Vice President and General Manager, AEssense Greater China
Wendy has responsibility for the daily operation of the company's China regional Asia Pacific operations. Before joining AEssense, Wendy was Executive Deputy General Manager of Sales and Marketing at RAE Systems for China Business Operations. She also held marketing and other executive positions at RAE Systems ASIA. Wendy was an early member of the RAE Systems team who established its original operations in China and built up its market presence in Asia. Wendy graduated from the Senior Executive Program for China offered by Tsinghua University, CEIBS, and Harvard Business School.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Quality
Prior to his role as VP, Quality, Reliability, and Service, Wenpeng was Vice President of Engineering at AEssense. Before arriving at AEssense, Wenpeng was Vice President of Engineering at RAE Systems and responsible for the development of various company products including QRAE+, Area RAE, MultiRAE 2, and 3G PID, the latter two accounted for half of the company's North America revenue. Wenpeng holds a bachelor degree in Aeronautical Enginering from National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan and a Master Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.