2023 Speakers

• 23 Years mainly in the ICT domain and private sector.
• Domain experience in areas of strategic planning, project management, startup Eco-system, PM portfolio, capacity building, FDIs, marketing & sales, talent management.
• Leading projects, civil status, Sas for Entrepreneurship, national PC Initiatives, national government training, community IT training, specialized training, government software licensing management, Oman 2020 census compliance and acceleration program.

Yannick Pilloux is Executive Sales Manager for EMEA. Prior to Plasma-Therm, Yannick was Product Manager at Tegal Corporation in California and Alcatel Micro Machining System in France for about 13 years, leading the DRIE technology for MEMS Industry, as well as TSV applications. He holds a Master degree in Business development from CESI Lyon-France. Yannick develops strong experience in MEMS industry where he is co-writer for multiple papers and co-author of Intellectual patent.

Siavash Pourkamali is the founder and CEO of Silicon DynamiX, Inc., a US-based start-up developing chip-scale micromechanical actuators to address the needs of the state-of-the-art highly integrated optical modules including compact camera modules. He is also a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received the BS degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2001, and the MS and the PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, in 2004 and 2006, respectively. He has co-authored over 150 publications in international journals and conferences in the area of micro-electromechanical systems and micromachining.

Robert Quinn is a highly respected figure in the semiconductor industry, known for his expertise and influence as a social media influencer and thought leader. He is the founder of Quinns Media, a successful semiconductor industry social media marketing agency, and the founder of the nonprofit organization SIMEU (Semiconductor Industry Mobile Education Unit). SIMEU aims to promote education and training within the next generation through a mobile education unit that will travel to schools across the nation, building the next generation of semiconductor professionals with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. With over 20 years of experience in the field, Robert’s unique insights and innovative ideas have established him as a leading voice in the industry. He is highly active on social media, posting daily updates on the latest industry news and trends, and is also a skilled content creator, producing podcasts, speaking at events, blogging, and authoring books on the subject. He is dedicated to sharing his knowledge and experience with others in the industry, and to making a positive impact through his work as a thought leader and through his leadership of SIMEU.

• PhD Computer Science University of Cambridge
• Seasoned entrepreneur with 20+ years experience in computer graphics, gaming technologies, and artificial intelligence
• Inventor of 500+ Patents (Filed with USPTO & China)
• Founder/CEO VIZZIO Singapore; Raised US$20m;
• Raised U$6 million for Round A from SoftBank for UK startup 1998, Round D US$ 48m from Doll Capital 2005; Achieved annual revenue of US$ 140 millions and signed up 200+ global handset makers;
• Sued Apple, Inc for Patent Infringement 2009 for US$200m
• Sold gaming company in 2019 for US$120m
• International Awards and Accolades
  • The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise
  • The Scottish Software Award 2007 “Scottish Software Company of the Year”
  • European award for innovation “EU Europe’s most promising technologies”
  • UK Enterprise 250 Award
  • Won China’s Most Prestigious IT Competition 2019 – Came in TOP in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province and National Level, beating over 30,000 companies
  • Featured & interviewed by BBC, CCTV, CNA, Straits Times

JON is best known for his work in 3D computer vision and automatic 3D reconstruction from imagery and videos and has developed an AI software pipeline to automatically turn 2D photographs and satellite imagery into 3D geometry. JON has also filed numerous patents for large-scale 3D Reconstruction of buildings from stereo satellite images pipeline using Deep Convolutional Network to extract contour polygons of buildings, and the combination of optimisation & computational geometry techniques to compute the Digital Terrain Model, a digital height model and to correctly estimate the position of the footprints. shadow & atmospheric cloud removal.

Other noteworthy projects he has worked on are real-time 3D scene rendering and visualisation pipeline; 3D reconstruction of cities from consumer grade cameras, satellite imagery, camera-based self-driving cars and a vision-based 3D positioning and tracking system. Most recently his academic research has focused on combining 3D scene reconstruction with semantic scene understanding via Deep Learning.

Thuraiya is an experienced marketer with a demonstrated history of working in the Investments, Telecommunications and FMCG industries in the UAE and Oman. Skilled in branding, marketing, go to market strategy, sales, and product launches. She was selected to be a part of the three year Unilever Future Leaders Programme and has held various roles leading campaign development both locally and regionally. Thuraiya is a strong sales and marketing professional with a Bachelor of Business and Commerce and a double degree in Marketing and International Business from Monash University Australia having worked previously in Ooredoo and Unilever. She currently is working at the Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones Investment Promotion team.

Ahmed is a technology professional with more than 15 years of experience in the semiconductors industry. As one of the first employees in Si-Ware Systems, he contributed to the company’s development throughout its different growth stages until it successfully grew in value and scale. Ahmed started his career as an A/MS designer and was part of a talented team who developed several high-performance ASICs and IPs. In 2011, he initiated the Application Engineering function to support the business development of the ASIC business unit and managed his team to sell to over 30 customers across the globe. After the acquisition of the Si-Ware ASIC business unit in 2019 by Goodix, Ahmed led the application engineering team serving products targeting smartphones.

In 2021, Ahmed co-founded Pulsar Microelectronics, a company that offers A/MS design services leveraging two decades of deep expertise in several domains, including power harvesters, SerDes, timing solutions, and sensors interfacing.

Ahmed has an MBA from China Europe International Business School in Shanghai and B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electronics Engineering from Ain Shams University in Cairo and holds 4 US patents.

Dr Douglas Sparks is the founder of M2N Technologies LLC. M2N Technologies is a consulting firm specializing in the MEMS and Semiconductors technology, product and process commercialization and supply chains. Dr. Sparks has international business experience in these fields in the US, China, Japan and Europe in medical, industrial, aerospace, semiconductors, consumer and automotive applications. He has worked at large MEMS IDMs, start-ups and MEMS foundries. Doug was the CTO of Hanking Electronics which built the first 200mm pure MEMS wafer fab in China. He also led technology acquisition, foundry process and MEMS related product development at Hanking. He founded a microsensor packaging company called NanoGetters, which was acquired by Materion. He was the EVP at Integrated Sensing Systems where he launched multiple microfluidic sensor products, including an FDA approved MEMS drug infusion device and industrial products acquired by Endress + Hauser. Doug worked in automotive sensors and semiconductor fabs with Delphi. Dr. Sparks holds a PhD in materials engineering from Purdue University and has published more than 120 technical papers and has 70 issued patents.

Dr. Karl Breidenbach has more than 15 years of experience in the high-tech industry and is an expert in semiconductor management. He leads Boston Consulting Groups (BCG) semiconductor procurement consulting activities globally and is a core member of BCG’s Operations practice, as well as an adjunct member of BCG’s Semiconductor practice.

Dr. Breidenbach specializes on large-scale transformations in technology-driven supply chains, with a focus on complex outsourcing engagements in semiconductors, software, and cost reductions in R&D-focused products. He has experience in leading large-scale post-merger integrations, with a focus on synergy generation and supply chain optimization. He has also developed semiconductor management programs across automotive and industrial companies, including redesign, platform strategies, and operating model evolution.

Prior to joining BCG, Dr. Breidenbach was a Senior Director at Infineon Technologies AG where he was heading semiconductor outsourcing business development with silicon foundries and OSATs companies across all product lines and technologies. He started his career at IBM as a consultant in the Strategy and Transformation Division, where he supported clients in automotive, electronics and the process industry on IT-driven supply chain optimization.

Dr. Breidenbach holds a PhD from Bundeswehr University Munich, M.Sc in Supply Chain Management from Dublin City University & NEOMA Business School France, BA in Information Technology and International Business from Cooperative State University Stuttgart and Open University. He is also a co-author of several books and publications on operations and automotive semiconductor management and regularly lectures at international universities.

Farhat serves as the CEO at GS Microelectronics. Prior to joining GSME he was serving as VP & GM of Manufacturing at Onsemi, where he was managing ON Semiconductor’s largest 300mm Fab in East-Fishkill, New York for over two years. Farhat joined ON Semiconductor through Quantenna Communication acquisition in March 2019 where he was serving as SVP of Manufacturing, Operations & Quality for six plus years. Farhat played a pivotal role in making Quantenna successful through manufacturing optimization, process & yields improvements, cost reductions, & significant margins improvement. Farhat’s efforts enabled Quantenna’s successful IPO in October 2016.

Farhat has over 25 years of successful experience in global manufacturing, Fab & OSAT operations, supplier management, building partnerships, and the assurance of quality & reliability processes. Prior to joining ON Semi/Quantenna Communications, he headed semiconductor manufacturing operations and quality functions at Synerchip Corporation (acquired by Silicon Image) & SiTime (a MEMS based timing solution company). His contributions towards building and restructuring company’s lower margin product lines to higher margins, enabled market penetration and corporate margins growth in the companies he served. Farhat also held various engineering and management positions in the areas of semiconductor manufacturing in companies like Texas Instruments, Cypress Semiconductor, Silicon Image & IDT.

Farhat holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.