Tony is an active investor and entrepreneur with a 30+ year history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people’s lives. He is the Principal at Future Shape, an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. Currently, Future Shape is coaching over 200+ startups innovating game-changing technologies. He is the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the “Internet of Things.” Tony was the SVP of Apple’s iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents. In May 2016, TIME named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod and the iPhone as three of the “50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time.”
Experience:
EVP Microsemi, CEO WiSpry, CEO uNav, TI, Silicon Systems, Hughes
BIO:
Russ has more than 30 years of experience in the electronic systems and semiconductor industries with a proven track record in executive leadership positions in both public and private companies.
As CEO of Menlo Micro, Russ oversees the corporate direction and strategy of the company, focusing on leadership, technology innovation and customers. Prior to Menlo Micro, Russ founded nGeniSys, an investment and consulting firm focused on the electronics, semiconductor and telecommunications industries.
He is also an Executive in Residence for GE Ventures and holds advisory and board of director positions at several venture-backed companies. Prior to Menlo and nGeniSys, he held the position of EVP of Marketing for Microsemi, where he led the integration of Actel, Zarlink and Symmetricom, representing over $700M USD of M&A over a 4-year period. His leadership of those acquisitions led to operating income improvements in each case from low single digits to all greater than 25% operating profit. One of those integrations resulted in greater 40% operating margin. Prior to Microsemi, he was the CEO of two start-ups, WiSpry, a RF MEMS company and uNav Microelectronics, a fabless semiconductor company, where under his leadership, u-Nav developed and introduced the first “single-chip” GPS semiconductor device. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Marketing for Silicon Systems and Texas Instruments Storage Product Division.
BIO:
Chris has more than 20 years of experience in electronic systems and semiconductor industries.
As SVP of Worldwide Marketing, Chris oversees all aspects of technology innovation and leads product development efforts. Prior to Menlo Micro, Chris was Vice President, Business Development for GE Ventures. At GE Ventures, Chris was responsible for developing new programs and monetization strategies for key technologies developed at General Electric’s R&D center in Schenectady, NY. He employed strategies such as licensing, joint ventures, acquisitions and spinouts for programs covering wireless, semiconductor, MEMS, and thermal management technology segments.
Prior to GE, Chris served in a variety of management and leadership positions over an 18-year career at Teradyne, world leader in semiconductor test equipment. In his most recent role at Teradyne, he was responsible for building a new Services Solutions Business for Teradyne’s Global Service Organization, a full-vertical supply-chain offering targeting emerging fabless semiconductor companies. Prior to that, Chris alternated between multiple assignments in Europe, where he managed large teams of field application engineers, and management positions within Teradyne’s product development organizations, defining and developing new product roadmaps. Chris holds a BSEE from Tufts University and an Executive MBA Certificate through Teradyne's Executive Leadership Program.
• Ajit joined Menlo Micro team in May 2020. He brings over 30 years of hi-tech manufacturing industry experience and has held senior positions in quality, engineering and technology development.Prior to Menlo Micro, Ajit led global quality for Zebra Technologies. Prior to that, his roles included Division Quality Manager at Samtec and Director of Engineering at Anaren. He has spoken at leading conferences on Quality and Customer Experience. He has published papers in technical journals and was awarded a patent relating to Flip Chip design. He is the author of a book titled “Customer Facing Processes and Customer Experience”. Ajit earned his Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering with a specialization in semiconductor processing from the University of Kansas.
Bio: Education: BSEE Graduated New Jersey Institute of Technology, Jun 1991 Professional Experience: 25+ Years’ experience in RF/Microwave/Analog Design with expertise in Transceiver, Synthesizer, VCO and MMIC design. Expertise with advanced simulation technology from Transient analysis through 3D EM. Keysight Technologies: Applications engineer focused on Advanced Simulation Tools, Device Modeling, EM and High Speed Digital. Harris - Electronic Warfare Systems: Involved with a large array of projects from airborne ECM systems to ground based C-IED. Designs include a wide dynamic range C-IED receiver with best in class performance, microwave octave tunable push-pull VCO’s, Digital Receivers, IFM and highly integrated MMIC solutions. Lucent Technologies: Design of commercial application products intended for high performance next generation base stations. Harris - Space Systems: GPS Design and Development. Advanced ground based GPS payload receiver capable of making precise navigation figure-of-merit measurements.
Bio: John Richardson is the Founder and CEO of X-Microwave. He has over 35 years' experience in RF/MW product development for Commercial, Military and Space applications. He spent most of his career as a designer and held leadership positions in Design Engineering, Product Design and Development and Marketing. Prior to founding X-Microwave October 2013, John worked at Wenzel Associates for 25 years in capacities ranging from Design Engineer with an emphasis on Low Phase Noise products, Engineering Manager delivering Hi-Rel IMAs for Military and Aerospace applications, Chief Engineer executing the development of new product families and Vice President of the company. John founded X-Microwave on the vision that RF/MW product design and development should be feasible with a Modular Approach. He received his BSEE from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston Louisiana in 1984.
Bio: Jeb serves as the CTO and Founder of 3D Glass Solutions and brings more than 20 years of expertise in the applied technology and high-tech manufacturing industry.
Jeb is the primary inventor of APEX® Glass and other 3DGS’ foundational IP and holds more than 100 patents that have been either granted or are pending on a variety of technologies. He has a diverse background in the advanced manufacturing of electronic packaging, RF devices and systems, and chem/bio-sensors.
Bio: Jussi RAHOLA is the founder and CEO of Optenni Ltd. He obtained the Doctor of Science in Technology degree in applied mathematics from Aalto University in 1996. Before founding Optenni Ltd in 2009 he has worked as a research manager in Nokia Research Center and as a development manager in CSC - IT Center for Science Ltd, Finland. His research interests include antennas, circuit simulation, impedance matching, computational electromagnetics and numerical mathematics. Under his leadership Optenni Ltd has developed and commercialized the Optenni Lab RF Design Automation Platform which is used by leading technology companies worldwide to improve the performance of their wireless products.
Bio: Dr Jaakko Juntunen, Sales Director at Optenni
Dr. Jaakko Juntunen completed his PhD in Radio Engineering in 2001 at Aalto University, Finland. Since then he has been working in the EDA industry in various roles, including technical support at APLAC Solutions and field application engineer at AWR Corporation, and since 2014 he is the sales director at Optenni Ltd. He has a wide experience in solving RF design problems using circuit- and EM-simulators. Recently, Juntunen and his colleagues at Optenni Ltd have studied the active impedance dynamic in the context of active beamforming in poorly isolated antenna arrays, and passive beamforming using coupled parasitic radiators.
Bio: Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Knowles Precision Devices
Peter Matthews is Senior Technical Marketing Manager at Knowles Precision Devices. As a division of Knowles Corporation, Knowles Precision Devices (KPD) focuses on production of a wide variety of highly engineered capacitors and microwave to millimeter-wave components for use in critical applications in military, medical, electric vehicle, and 5G market segments. Peter has over 20 years of experience in technology sales, marketing, and product management.
Bio: Marketing Director at Bright Toward Industrial Co., Ltd
• Ryan is a Director in charge of Bright Toward's Marketing activities and he earned his Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Bright Toward has been manufacturing relays supplying the semiconductor industry for over three decades; the technology for mechanical and IC solidstate relays has been around for the
longest time. Knowing the market, we understand how Menlo Micro’s Ideal Switch will be revolutionary in the semiconductor designing and testing industry. We are very grateful to be a part of it and to be taking part in the first ever Switch Summit.
Bio: Pallab Midya, Ph.D.Electrical Engineering, President
• Pallab has over 25 years of experience in the areas of power conversion and integrated system design. Pallab is an accomplished innovator with a proven track record of producing innovative state-of-the-art solutions that solve challenging problems. He has held the position of Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Motorola and subsequently Freescale Semiconductor. He has worked on a wide range of applications including class D audio amplifiers, RF power amplifiers, data converters, DC to DC converters, and alternative energy systems. Pallab has 45 issued US patents, 8 patents pending, and 40 technical publications. Pallab holds a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL.
Bio: Principal Program Manager, Keysight Technologies
Rick is a principal program manager at Keysight Technologies with expertise in technical/industrial marketing and development of test and measurement tools and electronic design automation software in the computer, semi-conductor, communications, and storage industries. Rick provides technical leadership in driving standards within industry organizations for PCI Express, CCIX, GenZ, OCP, NVM Express, CEI 4.0, IEEE 802.3, ExpressCard, DDR, SATA, and InfiniBandRick earned a MBA from the University of Colorado and holds a BSEE from Brigham Young University with an emphasis on digital design and computer architecture. Rick actively contributes to the development of the PCIe physical layer BASE, CEM, and Test specifications and has led electrical Gold Suite testing at PCI-SIG
Bio: Director Advanced Technology, Menlo Microsystems
As the Technology Director at Menlo Micro, Xu is responsible for new technology initiatives to serve new product lines. Xu has extensive experience in MEMS technology development and MEMS device applications in RF/Microwave. During his tenure at Samsung, Xu led joint technology development with Wispry to introduce the world's first MEMS-based mobile phone antenna tuner. He was also in charge of the first CMOS integrated microphone product development at Akustica. Xu has a Doctor degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Bio: Senior Product Marketing Engineer
Jon Leitner is the Senior Product Marketing Engineer at Menlo Micro, headquartered in Irvine, California. Jon's role is focused on developing and bringing to market novel switch products and subsystems for RF and high data rate applications. He has a broad-
ranging professional career that spans the RF, microwave, and IoT industries, holding roles in R&D, product applications, sales, and marketing. Jon earned his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from N.Y.I.T and a Master's in Electrical Engineering-
Electrophysics from the University of Southern California.
Bio: Senior Systems Applications Engineer
As part of Menlo's Application Engineering Team, Stewart has played an integral role in supporting leading customer designs and assisting them with their product development. Stewart has extensive engineering experience working in the semiconductor industry supporting major global accounts, with expertise at the device level supporting xDSL, 802.11, microwave backhaul, and satellite front-end. Stewart has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Hanyang University in South Korea.
Bio: Senior Systems Applications Engineer
As part of Menlo's Application Engineering Team, Marten has played an integral role during his three years in leading customer applications designs. Marten has extensive start-up experience in the international RF and wireless semiconductor markets, including significant worldwide sales and joint project experience in both mobile device and infrastructure markets and interface standards (mobile devices, antenna, air interface/PHY, stack and MIPI chip to chip). Marten has a Master's degree in Electrophysics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Bio: Senior Systems Applications Engineer
Ian joined Menlo's Application Engineering Team in the summer of 2018 and has played an integral role during his tenure in leading EVK development, customer applications and RF designs with a focus on filter development. Ian has extensive experience in the international RF and wireless infrastructure markets and in space applications. Ian has a Master's degree in Microwaves and Opto-electronics from The University of London.
Bio: Applications Engineer
During his year as a part of Menlo's Application Engineering Team, Teague has played an integral role implementing device characterization testing and supporting customer applications. Teague has RF experience, including working extensively in the defense sector on EW and radar systems. Teague has a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
Bio: Applications Engineer
Tom Clinkenbeard is the newest member of Menlo’s Application Engineering Team, and brings valuable RF design and test experience. Tom has contributed to many high density, high power, and high-reliability projects for commercial and defense applications. Tom has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara.
Bio: Field Applications Engineer
Roy Anderson is a Field Applications Engineer at Anritsu Company, with over 30 years of experience in the test and measurement industry. He has focused on solutions to customer problems in interference hunting, PIM detection, wireless network measurements, and DAS. Roy has authored a number of webinars, training programs, videos, white papers, and application notes focused on radio frequency applications. Roy holds a bachelor’s degree from California State University at Long Beach.
Tony Fadell, FutureShape
Russ Garcia, Menlo Micro
Chris Giovanniello, Menlo Micro
Jon Leitner, Menlo Micro
Marten Seth, Menlo Micro
Presentation by Roy Anderson, Anritsu
Jussi Rahola, Optenni
Jaakko Juntunen, Optenni
Marten Seth, Menlo Micro
Ajit Utagikar, Menlo Micro
Teague Kohlbeck, Menlo Micro
Dan Schwarz, Keysight Technologies
Xu Zhu, Menlo Micro
John Richardson, X-Microwave
Peter Matthews, Knowles
Stewart Yang, Menlo Micro
Ian Burke, Menlo Micro
Ian Burke, Menlo Micro
Jeb Flemming, 3D Glass Solutions
Marten Seth, Menlo Micro
Jonathan Leitner, Menlo Micro
Rick Eads, Keysight Technologies
Stewart Yang, Menlo Micro
Ryan Hsu, Bright Toward
Marten Seth, Menlo Micro
Chris Giovanniello, Menlo Micro
Marten Seth, Menlo Micro
Pallab Midya, ADX Research
Ian Burke, Menlo Micro