AVICENA - Key Persons

Behzad Razavi received the BSEE degree from Sharif University of Technology in 1985 and the MSEE and PhDEE degrees from Stanford University in 1988 and 1992, respectively. He was with AT&T Bell Laboratories and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories until 1996. Since 1996, he has been Associate Professor and subsequently Professor of electrical engineering at University of California, Los Angeles. His current research includes wireless and wireline transceivers and data converters. Professor Razavi was an Adjunct Professor at Princeton University from 1992 to 1994, and at Stanford University in 1995. He served on the Technical Program Committees of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) from 1993 to 2002 and VLSI Circuits Symposium from 1998 to 2002. He has also served as Guest Editor and Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, and International Journal of High Speed Electronics. He served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters.Professor Razavi is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of US National Academy of Inventors. He has served as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and is a Fellow of IEEE. Professor Razavi has authored a broad range of books and publications some of which have been translated into several languages. He is also the recipient of many awards including most recently the Teaching Award of the American Society for Engineering Education PSW in 2014, the IEEE CAS John Choma Education Award in 2017, and the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Innovative Education Award in 2022.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Management Team
• Vice President of Sales & Marketing

Chris Pfistner joined Avicena in September of 2021 as Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Chris has over 25 years of experience in Sales, Marketing, Product Line Management, and Business Development in the global fiber optic module and systems market. Prior to Avicena, Chris held executive positions with Jabil Photonics, Lumentum, Finisar/II-VI, NeoPhotonics, Terawave, Advanced Fibre and Pirelli Optical Systems. Chris holds Ph.D. and MS and BS degrees in Applied Physics from the University of Berne, Switzerland.

Job Titles:

• Venture Capital Investor in Silicon Valley

Chris Rust is a venture capital investor in Silicon Valley. He works with technology entrepreneurs from the earliest stages of company creation to help their startups become outstanding companies. Chris's experiences include: 16 years of technology venture investing as Founder and Managing Partner of Clear Ventures, Partner at Sequoia Capital and USVP; 12 years of company building as co-founder (badge #2) and lead architect of broadband access pioneer Roadrunner/TWC Internet (Charter Communications); startup PLM at Carrier Access (IPO CACS) and Comcore (NSM); and technical staff at US West and MITRE. He is currently working on stealth projects while supporting his active portfolio. Since 1998 Chris has made early stage investments in 40 startups, starting 35x at seed/series A and 5x at series B. His first 24 exits have produced $32B+ of market cap from market-leading companies such as GoPro (IPO GPRO), Dune (BRCM), Mellanox (IPO MLNX), Syndesis (SUBEX), LVL7 (BRCM), VxTel (INTC), Avanex (IPO AVNX), Telera (Alcatel), SwitchOn (PMCS), and Abrizio (PMCS). His active VC portfolio provides innovative IT products and technology-enabled services related to cloud computing, data center and enterprise IT infrastructure, data science, information security, machine intelligence, meta-search, and predictive commerce. It includes Arrcus, Atmosic, GoEuro, Reflektion, Robin, Vera, Wootcloud, and Zerto. Chris strives to help create opportunity in a supportive and respectful manner. He is seeking new investments with ambitious and imaginative founders pursuing compelling IT products and services.

Job Titles:

• Vice President and Managing Director of Samsung Catalyst Fund

Christopher Chu is Vice President and Managing Director of Samsung Catalyst Fund, Samsung Electronics' multi-stage venture capital fund investing in deep-tech infrastructure and data-enabled platforms. Chris' investments span multiple domains including data center and cloud, artificial intelligence, networking and 5G, automotive, robotics, and quantum technologies. Chris has been a Partner at Pacific Venture Partners where he led investments in communications, consumer electronics, and semiconductor technologies. Combined with his previous investment roles at Crescendo Ventures, Worldview Technology Partners, and CMEA Ventures, he has helped to manage investments in dozens of startups for over 15 years. Chris has also held business and engineering positions at VLSI Technology (Philips), AnyDATA, National Semiconductor, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and IBM Watson Research. In addition, he was a member of the charter class of the Kauffman Fellowship in venture capital. Chris holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and BS in Electrical Engineering from The California Institute of Technology.

Job Titles:

• Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Infinera

David F. Welch, Ph.D. is Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Infinera, a role he has held since October 2018. In this role, he drives deep business and technology innovation through forward-looking strategies, including breakthrough technologies and technology partnerships, in addition to innovative business and market directions. Dr. Welch is currently a member of Infinera's Board of Directors, where he has served the company since 2010. His past roles at Infinera include Chief Strategy and Technology Officer from 2017 to 2018, President from 2013 to 2017, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer from 2004 to 2013 and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) from 2001 to 2004. Prior to co-founding Infinera, he served as CTO, Transmission Division at JDS Uniphase, and in various executive roles, including CTO and Vice President of Corporate Development, at Spectra Diode Labs (SDL). Dr. Welch currently serves on the Board of Directors several start-up companies. He holds over 130 patents, and over 300 technical publications, and has been awarded the Optical Society of America's (OSA) Adolph Lomb Medal, Joseph Fraunhofer Award and John Tyndall Award, as well as the Institute of Engineering Technology's J J Thompson Medal for Electronics. He is a Fellow of OSA and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Welch holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

Job Titles:

• CEO
• Member of the Board
• Member of the Management Team

Bardia Pezeshki generated, developed, and commercialized optoelectronic technology that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. High points include the tunable laser developed at Santur, selling over 500,000 units and >$0.5B in revenue, the first practical multiwavelength high bandwidth optical transceivers at 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s with MEMS-based integration technology at Kaiam, and most recently working a new way of making very dense connections for chip-to-chip communications.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• CTO
• Member of the Board
• Member of the Management Team

Rob Kalman is co-founder and CTO of Avicena. Rob has a long history of successfully bringing leading-edge optical communications solutions to market. He was on the founding teams of Optivision, ONI Systems, and Luminous Networks. Most recently, he was VP of Engineering for Kaiam where he led development of 100Gbps and 400Gbps optical transceivers for hyperscale data centers. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Job Titles:

• Senior Vice President, Managing Director and Co - Head of Samsung Catalyst Fund

Francis Ho is Senior Vice President, Managing Director and Co-Head of Samsung Catalyst Fund (SCF). Francis has a background in venture capital, business development, strategy consulting, marketing, and engineering, with extensive operating experience in multiple industries including semiconductors, optics, networking, and storage. Prior to Samsung, he was vice president of Strategic Marketing at Inphi Corporation and has held roles at McKinsey & Company, JP Morgan Partners, and ONI Systems. Francis holds a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and holds a M.S. in applied physics and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology. He holds six U.S. patents relating to semiconductor technologies.

Jim Harris received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He is currently the James and Ellenor Chesebrough Professor, Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics and Materials Science. He and his PhD students have done seminal work in numerous fields, notably the development of GaAs materials and associated electrical and optical devices. His current research interests include 3D nanostructured materials for the control of light, development of a retinal prosthesis, novel high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells, laser driven electron accelerator (SLAC on a Chip), and VCSELs and SPADs for facial recognition and LIDAR. He has been the principal PhD supervisor for 138 students, 25 of whom have become faculty members and 37 whom he has mentored and collaborated with as founders of startup companies. He is a Fellow of IEEE, APS, OSA and MRS. He has more than 1100 publications in refereed scientific journals, 14 book chapters, editor of 3 books and inventor of 31 issued US patents. He has received numerous prestigious awards, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2011.

Neil Richardson was born in the UK where he attended Bolton School. He went on to the University of Cambridge where he obtained a master's degree in electrical sciences and a PhD in electron microscopy and spectroscopy. He joined Fairchild Semiconductor Research Labs in Palo Alto, California in 1982, and went on to lead an electron microscope product development group at Schlumberger Technologies in San Jose, California. After a brief stint with Schlumberger corporate in New York City Neil returned to California to join KLA where he was general manager of overlay and CD-SEM metrology product divisions and subsequently general manager of KLA's electron beam inspection product line. Most recently he was general manager of Gemfire Corporation, a privately held photonics company with operations in Fremont, California and Livingston, Scotland. Additionally, Neil has been for many years a venture partner at Wellington Partners in Munich, Germany.

Job Titles:

• General Manager of Applied Materials Display Yield Technology Group

Peter D. Nunan is the General Manager of Applied Materials Display Yield Technology Group. He joined Applied Display Group in 2014 with the stated objective of bringing Semiconductor yield methods and equipment to the display industry. YTG's goal is to enable display manufacturers to develop and produce advanced displays. Prior to joining Applied Display Group, Peter held various positions within the semiconductor industry. Recent Positions are: VP of Varian Semiconductor Technology Development, VP-GM of KLA-Tencor's Professional Services Division. Peter holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University.

Pradeep's career includes founding Juniper Networks, the company widely recognized for inventing and industrializing silicon-based routers-the invention that played a central role in bringing about the Internet age. Over the years he has held several key roles at Juniper, including founding CEO and Chairman, then Vice Chairman and CTO, and now Chief Scientist. Pradeep had a hand in the inception, design and development of virtually every product Juniper shipped from 1996 through 2015. Before founding Juniper, Pradeep worked at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC for 11 years developing design tools and multiprocessor architectures. During this period he invented the first cache coherency algorithms for packet switched buses and made fundamental contributions to Sun Microsystem's high performance multiprocessor servers. Pradeep holds a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, as well as a Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hawaii. In addition, Pradeep holds both a Masters and a Doctorate in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University. Pradeep is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and holds more than 200 patents.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Sense Photonics

Scott is both Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Sense Photonics, a leading Flash LIDAR company. He has more than 30 years of commercial and innovative product experience in III-V compound semiconductors and optics. Before Sense, Scott served as Executive Vice President of Manufacturing and Technology development at Semprius Corp where he led the development of advanced multi-junction solar cells and modules, Vice President of Engineering at Santur Corporation, an advanced tunable laser company, Vice President of Technology at Optovia, an optical amplifier company, and as Vice President of Operations at CoreTek, a successful tunable laser start-up acquired by Nortel Networks. Scott started his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he helped to develop and manufacture GaAs semiconductor lasers for the world's first commercial fiber optic communication systems.