Abundant Nexus

Exo’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Sandeep is a proven entrepreneur with a hands-on managerial background in leading interdisciplinary technology and business teams, and a track record of bringing to market complex hardware and software products. Exo is his fourth startup organization.
Prior to founding Exo, Sandeep was Founder and President of Jyve Inc. (acquired by a major semiconductor corporation at an exit valuation of more than $60M). Previously, he was CEO of IntelliSense, a leading provider of micro-mechanical integrated circuits (MEMS) and nanotechnology-based software and solutions. Under his guidance, IntelliSense expanded its physical presence into China and India and its sales presence into 30+ countries. Sandeep helped the company rapidly grow from a startup to its eventual acquisition at a valuation of $750 million. In 2003, he led the re-acquisition of IntelliSense from Corning.
Sandeep holds a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, an M.S. from LSU and an M.B.A. from INSEAD, France.

Roger H. Grace is president of Roger Grace Associates, a Bonita Springs Florida-based technology marketing consultancy, which he founded in 1982 and which provides market research, strategic marketing communications and business development services to the MEMS, sensors and capital equipment industry…from startups to nations.    His background includes over 40 years in high frequency analog circuit design engineering, application engineering, project management, product marketing and technology consulting.  He was a founding member of MANCEF and currently is its VP of the Americas.

Specializing in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and sensors for over 35 years, he is considered a pioneer in this field.  Authoring over 40 technical feature articles; organizing, chairing, and speaking at over 30 international conferences, he is frequently quoted as an industry expert in major international technical and business publications.

He was a recipient of the 2004 Outstanding Engineering Alumni of the Year by Northeastern University and was bestowed the inaugural Sensor Industry Impact Award by Sensors Magazine in 2016.  He was visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley from 1990 to 2003. His educational background includes a B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. (as a Raytheon Company fellow) from Northeastern University, and the MBA program at Haas Graduate School of Business at U.C. Berkeley.

Edvard Kälvesten holds a PhD in MEMS at KTH & MSc Physics at Chalmers CEO and is Board Member and Founder of Silex Microsystems. He has over two decades been immersed in the MEMS industry and has a profound dedication to the evolution of the industry, which also includes numerous patents and patent-pending applications. In the year 2000, he founded Silex Microsystems as a direct result of his PhD studies within MEMS. Today the company is the world’s #1 Pure Play MEMS Foundry. Edvard´s visionary technology innovative drive is well incorporated in the company spirit.

Susumu Kaminaga, born in 1946, graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1969 after he studied Mechanical Engineering. He joined Sumitomo Precision Products Co., Ltd. (SPP), Japan immediately after he finished the study and was president of the company since June 2004 until June 2012 for eight years. He established his own company, SK Global Advisers Co., Ltd. in 2012 which provides companies, SMEs and venture business with advice and consultancy from the viewpoint of technology and management. He lived in Germany for six years in 1980s and in UK for four and a half years in 1990s. He was Executive Senior Adviser & Chairman of the Steering Committee of SPP Technologies Co., Ltd. (SPT), an affiliate of SPP from 2012 to 2024.

Among SPP’s diversified technology-oriented business established through its 100-year history, he pioneered MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) related business, starting in 1988 and played a major role to develop and commercialize Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) technology. During his initial work of developing the technology and business for MEMS, he was instrumental to run Surface Technology Systems (STS) in Wales, UK, which was a subsidiary of SPP since the acquisition in 1995. Under his management at site until 1999, STS developed and commercialized state-of-the-art technology, DRIE for the first time in the world. The DRIE technology, as widely perceived, has enabled MEMS world to expand rapidly in the last decades, especially in the automotive application, smart phones and IoT world. He was further involved as the main driver in forming SPP Process Technology Systems (SPTS) in Wales, UK in 2009 to integrate STS and the newly acquired Aviza business, which later became SPTS Technologies (SPTS) with local management after MBO he accepted in 2011. Nowadays, SPTS in Wales, UK and SPT in Japan together contribute a lot to the exciting smart phone industries and IoT world with the unique technologies. The major applications include automotive and medical/healthcare services. As a result of his career with MEMS for many years, he started to work to promote “Trillion Sensors Initiative” together with Janusz Bryzek in 2013. He was inspired by the visionary, “Janusz Bryzek” and involved in organizing all the TSensorsR (Trillion Sensors) summits in the US, Europe and Japan in the next few years.

He is Fellow of JSME (The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers) and a member of JSAP (The Japan Society of Applied Physics), IEE (The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan) and IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers). He is Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (FRAeS) and was Member of the External Advisory Board of Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley from 2007 to 2014 as well as Visiting Professor at the University of Hyogo in Japan. He has been an outside director at Toray Industries, Inc. since 2020 and was an outside director at Olympus corporation until 2022.
He received 2024 IEEE EDS Robert Bosch Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems Award for development and commercialization of Deep Reactive Ion Etching Technology.

Franz Laermer is a Bosch Research Fellow at Robert Bosch GmbH. He studied physics and mathematics at the Technical University Munich, Germany and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland from 1980 to 1986. He obtained a Diploma in Physics from ETH Zurich, Switzerland in 1986 and a Ph.D. from the Technical University Munich, Germany in 1989. He joined Corporate Research and Technology Center of Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany in 1990. Laermer worked on new microstructuring technologies and new silicon sensors for automotive applications, mainly surface micromachined accelerometers, gyroscopes, and pressure sensors. Since 2003, he has been developing new applications for MEMS and Microfluidics outside the automotive area with a focus on microfluidic devices for molecular diagnostics at the point of care (à Bosch Vivalytic platform). He is co-inventor of the Bosch deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process and holds many patents in the fields of silicon micromachining, microsensors and microfluidic solutions for molecular diagnostics. Together with his co-worker Mrs Andrea Urban, he was awarded with the prize “European Inventor of the year 2007 – Industry” by the European Patent Office and the European Commission. In 2014 he received the “IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal Award” and in 2019 the “Eduard-Rhein-Prize”, for the invention and the sustainable success of the Bosch DRIE process.

Magnus Rimskog has worked with the development of technology in both an engineering and a business capacity for 27 years.  The last 20 of which have been at Silex Microsystems. He holds an M.Sc. in physics from The Lund Institute of Technology. Originally, he specialized in Optics, but then switched over to the MEMS industry. In his current position, Magnus has overseen a variety of different products from their concept through to volume manufacturing. He has also seen Silex grow from 20 to around 400 employees. He is passionate about the development of new technology, and especially about how these technologies help improve people’s quality of life. He was inducted into the MEMS & Sensors Industry Group’s Hall of Fame in 2014.

 

Kurt Petersen received his BS degree cum laude in EE from UC Berkeley in 1970.  In 1975, he received a PhD in EE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Dr. Petersen established a micromachining research group at IBM from 1975 to 1982, during which he wrote the review paper “Silicon as a Mechanical Material,” published in the IEEE Proceedings (May 1982).  This paper is the most frequently referenced work in the field of micromachining and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Since 1982, Dr. Petersen has co-founded six companies in MEMS technology, Transensory Devices Inc. in 1982, NovaSensor in 1985 (now owned by Amphenol), Cepheid in 1996 (acquired by Danaher in 2016), SiTime in 2004 (now listed as SITM on NASDAQ), Profusa in 2008 (still private), and Verreon in 2009 (acquired by Qualcomm). In 2011, Dr. Petersen joined the Silicon Valley Band of Angels.  The Band is an angel investment group which mentors and invests in early stage, high-tech, start-up companies.  Today, he spends most of his time helping and mentoring such companies. Dr. Petersen has published over 100 papers, and has been granted over 35 patents in the field of MEMS.  He was awarded the prestigious IEEE Medal of Honor in 2019 as well as the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal in 2001 for his contributions to MEMS.  Dr. Petersen is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Life Fellow of the IEEE in recognition of his contributions to “the commercialization of MEMS technology”.

Weijie Yun is the Founder and Managing Partner of Tyche Partners. As a serial entrepreneur, Weijie brings deep industry domain knowledge to identify investment opportunities and hands-on operating experience to help portfolio companies to grow their business.

Weijie’s passion is to identify and invest in visionary entrepreneurs with breakthrough technologies in the hard tech space, such as IT infrastructure (big data, storage and networking), IoT and wearable devices, 3D printing, autonomous driving, consumer electronics, and semiconductor. Currently, he is serving as a board member/observer at Crossbar, Formlabs, Latticework, mCube, Motiv, Pavilion, and Qumulo. His other investments include Aeye, Basebit, Desktop Metal, Ripcord, Shoof, and SpinLaunch.

Before founding Tyche Partners, Weijie was an entrepreneur with proven track record of combining his technical insights and market intuition to maximize companies’ value. He was the founder and CEO of Telegent Systems, AIP Networks and SiTek. Currently, he is a member of the Board of Trustees at UC Berkeley Foundation, and a founding board member of M.E.T. program at UC Berkeley. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley.

 

Dr. Alissa M. Fitzgerald is the founder and CEO of A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates, LLC, a MEMS product development company located in Burlingame, CA. Dr. Fitzgerald has over 25 years of engineering experience in MEMS design, fabrication and product development. She now advises clients on the entire cycle of microelectronic product development, from business and IP strategy to supply chain and manufacturing operations. Earlier in her career, Dr. Fitzgerald worked in engineering and management positions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Orbital Sciences Corporation, Sigpro, and Sensant Corporation, now part of Siemens. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Dr. Fitzgerald is co-author of MEMS Product Development: From Concept to Commercialization, has numerous journal publications, holds ten patents, and is a frequent invited speaker at professional meetings. She is a member of the SEMI-MSIG Standards Committee and served as a board director on the MEMS Industry Group (MIG) Governing Council from 2008-2014. In 2013, she was inducted into the MIG Hall of Fame. She is currently a board director for Rigetti Computing (Nasdaq: RGTI), the Transducer Research Foundation, and the IEEE Spectrum Editorial Advisory Board.

 

Dr. Evgeni Gousev is a Senior Director of Engineering in Qualcomm Research. He leads HW R&D org in the Silicon Valley Center and is also responsible for developing ultra low power embedded computing platform, including always on machine vision AI technology. He has been with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. since 2005 after joining from IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where he drove projects in the field of advanced silicon technologies. Evgeni serves as the Chairman of the Board for tinyML Foundation. In 2020, Dr. Gousev was inducted into the “Hall of Fame” of SEMI MEMS and Sensors Industry Group.

 From 1993 to 1998, Dr. Gousev held academic professorship appointments with Rutgers University and Hiroshima University (1997). Evgeni holds a M.S. degree in Applied Physics and a Ph.D. in Solid-State Physics. He has co-edited 24 books and published 163 papers and is an inventor on more than 60 issued and filed patents.

Shad Roundy (Member, IEEE) received the MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA in 2000 and 2003, respectively. He joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 2012 where he is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. From 2005 to 2012 he worked in the MEMS industry developing tire pressure sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and energy harvesters. From 2003 to 2005 he was a Lecturer at the Australian National University. His research interests include energy harvesting, wireless power transfer, and more generally MEMS sensors and actuators. He a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Dr. Mary Ann Maher received her PhD from Caltech in 1989 in the area of semiconductor device modeling developing a new charge-based transistor model. At Caltech, she conducted research in the area of neuromorphic systems, analog circuits and transistor modeling. She pursued post doctoral studies at the CSEM in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where she studied analog memories and low power analog ICs with on-chip sensors for artificial vision applications. At Tanner Research she began the simulation and modeling group and launched Tanner’s T-Spice analog circuit simulator product. She then became the Software Architect responsible for specifications for layout, routing, simulation, analysis, schematic and viewing design tools. As Director of Advanced Products, she brought to market Tanner’s MEMS Pro microsystem and MCM Pro multi-chip module and packaging design tool suites. Moving to MEMSCAP, she became the company’s CTO and later the General Manager and Executive Vice President of the Design Automation Business Unit. In 2004, she started SoftMEMS, LLC, the maker of the popular microsystems design tools – MEMS Pro and MEMS Xplorer, where she serves as CEO.

He received a B.A. in Applied Physics from UC San Diego, 1986, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1989 and 1992. Prior to joining the faculty of EECS in 1996, he taught in the Electrical Engineering Department, UCLA.

Professor Pister developed Smart Dust, a project with the goal of putting a complete sensing/communication platform inside a cubic millimeter. For this project, he was awarded the second annual Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation, in 2006, from the I/UCRC Association, for developing and successfully commercializing Smart Dust. He has also focused his energies on synthetic insects, which he has characterized as “basically Smart Dust with legs.” Professor Pister was award the Alfred F. Sperry Founder Award in 2009 for his “contributions to the science and technology of instrumentation, systems, and automation.”

Kris is a co-Director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center (BSAC) and the Ubiquitious Swarm Lab.

Dr. Brian Bircumshaw is Exo’s Vice President of Product Engineering and an expert in the design, process, and foundry commercialization of micro-mechanical integrated circuits (MEMS) sensors. He brings more than 15 years of experience in the MEMS field, having worked on the design and fabrication of piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (pMUTs), pressure sensors, accelerometers, gyrometers, resonators, micromirrors, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), and magnetometers.  He has helped deliver millions of chips into consumer devices, brought to market a field test for heroin, and developed one of the most accurate tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS). He has experience with a large cross-section of the semiconductor/MEMS industry. Prior to Exo, Brian was Director of MEMS at Fairchild / ON Semiconductor, responsible for operations and MEMS Process for the FIS series of 6DOF products. At ThermoFisher Scientific, he served as Principal Engineer, heading MEMS chip manufacturing for the microPHAZIR NIR spectrometer and the heroin testing SERS strips for the TruNarc narcotics analyzer. Brian was also the Senior MEMS Design Engineer at LV Sensor. Brian holds a Ph.D. in MEMS from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Phil. from Cambridge University in England, and a B.S. with honors from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He has served as a Churchill Scholar, Rotary International Ambassador, and a Department of Defense (DoD) National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow.

Lay Lay Lee-Aquila joined Exo Imaging in 2016 as a Production Manager, where she brought extensive experience in semiconductor, sensors, and MEMS assembly, spanning over 35 years. During her time at Exo, she has played a crucial role in providing technical support to build the company’s first product. Subsequently, Lay Lay moved on to a new role as Exo Facility Manager.

Before joining Exo, Lay Lay had an impressive career history, having worked at various companies in the semiconductor and sensor industry, including InvenSense, Transparent Networks, Maxim Integrated Products, Integrated Sensor Solutions, and Nova Sensor.

Bette Cooper has over 30 years of experience as a trade association owner and president, business manager and event manager. Until recently Bette was the co-owner and president of the Microelectronics Packaging and Test Engineering Council (MEPTEC), a trade association for the semiconductor packaging and test industry. She is currently a Principal for MEPCOM (Media, Event Planning and Communications).

From 2019-2023 Bette was the Event and Program Manager for the tinyML Foundation. From 1996 – 2004, concurrent with running MEPTEC, Bette was the Business Manager for the Semiconductor Assembly Council (SAC), a non-profit technical association whose mission was established to standardize, certify, and improve subcontractor quality systems and process control practices. In 2010 Bette organized the MEMS Technical Summit, founded by Janusz Bryzek and Kurt Petersen, which was held at Stanford University at the Alumni Club. With only a few months to plan, the Summit was attended by over 250 and 20+ sponsors. As a spin-off of the MEMS Technical Summit, Bryzek started the first TSensors (Trillion Sensors) Summit. Bette provided all organization and management services for all the Summits held over the next few years. Bette holds a BA in Business, with a specialty in Marketing. She obtained her degree while working full time over a few years in various positions.

Benedetto Vigna is Chief Executive Officer since September 2021. Before joining Ferrari, he was President of STMicroelectronics, Analog, MEMS and Sensors Group, since January 2016 and also a member of ST’s Executive Committee from May 31, 2018. Vigna joined ST in 1995 and founded the Company’s MEMS activities (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems). Under his guidance, ST’s MEMS sensors established the Company’s leadership with large OEMs in motion-activated user interfaces. His responsibilities were expanded to include connectivity, imaging and power solutions and he piloted a series of successful moves into new business areas, with a particular focus on the industrial and automotive market segments. During his career Vigna has filed more than 200 patents on micromachining, authored numerous publications and has sat on the Boards of several EU-funded programs including start-ups as well as worldwide recognized Boards of Asian and American research centers. Benedetto Vigna graduated in Subnuclear Physics from the University of Pisa.