Executive Staff

Mr. Mashkoori came to Kovio from Spansion, the largest company focused exclusively on Flash memory. He played an instrumental role in the formation of Spansion in 2003, and managed the company’s Wireless Business Unit. As executive vice president, he oversaw the marketing, engineering, operations and business functions of the division. Under Mr. Mashkoori’s leadership, the wireless division made significant market share gains into the world’s largest handset providers by transitioning from a commodity player to a systems solutions provider. During his tenure, the division experienced more than double market share growth in the wireless handset market as the market itself expanded to almost one billion units in 2006.

Mr. Mashkoori began his professional career at AMD in 1978, serving in various senior level operational roles for a period of 17 years. Mr. Mashkoori was also vice president of operations and later senior vice president of operations and business development at Trident Microsystems between 1996 and 1998, before re-joining AMD in 1999. At AMD he held various executive positions including vice president of operations, vice president of the Embedded Business Unit, vice president of the Wireless Business Unit and vice president and director of operations for the Memory Group.

Mr. Mashkoori holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from San Jose State University.

Vik Pavate
VP of Business Development
Kovio

Vikram Pavate joined Kovio in 2002 with extensive experience in business development, product management and strategic planning. As vice president of business development, he is responsible for Kovio’s corporate strategy, business development, product management and marketing, OEM relationships and strategic joint development and technology alliances. From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Pavate held increasingly responsible positions in global product management within various deposition product divisions of Applied Materials Inc., including Physical Vapor Deposition, Copper Barrier-Seed and Integrated Liner Barrier. He also worked as a summer intern in the business development group at Onetta Inc., an optical networking company funded by Sequoia and Matrix Partners.
 
Mr. Pavate holds 10 U.S. patents and has published 30 papers on electronic materials and semiconductor technology. He received a Bachelor of Technology in ceramic engineering from the Institute of Technology, BHU (India), Master of Science in metallurgical engineering from Purdue University and Master of Business Administration from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He was awarded the prestigious Price Institute Fellowship for Entrepreneurship and a Silver Medal in the 2001 Wharton Business Plan Competition.        

Richard Young
VP of Operations
Kovio

Richard Young joined Kovio in 2007, bringing with him a unique combination of technical and financial operations expertise spanning semiconductor fabrication, business finance and large scale change initiatives. Mr. Young has deep experience in efficiency improvement in mature operations including “Kaizen” and lean manufacturing methods.

Mr. Young comes to Kovio from Spansion, where he held various roles over a period of several years. Most recently, he was director and controller of the company’s Wireless Solutions Division, and was previously director and controller of World Wide Operations. Prior to joining Spansion, Mr. Young spent eight years at AMD where he held a range of managerial positions, including manager of Operations Analysis, as well as operational and contruction manager in AMD’s Fab 30 in Dresden.

Mr. Young has also held executive and engineering positions with Mechanical Design and Construction in New Mexico; Industrial Design Corporation in Oregon and New Mexico; and Shimizu America Corporation, the U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s largest design and build general contractor. Mr. Young holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Jiang Li
VP of Engineering
Kovio

As vice president of engineering at Kovio, Jiang Li is responsible for the company's technology and product development. Mr. Li has extensive experience in bringing new technology and products into the marketplace.

Prior to joining Kovio, Mr. Li spent 9 years at AMD and Spansion, the largest company focused exclusively on Flash memory and previously a joint venture between AMD and Fujitsu. He held various engineering management positions there that culminated in is tenure as vice president of product engineering. He led and reshaped the team responsible for new product development within Spansion's Wireless Business Unit and made significant improvement on its product introduction procedures and time to market.

Mr. Li received a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University, China.

Board Members

Vinod Khosla

"Kovio is introducing one of the most disruptive technologies that the electronics and printing markets have seen to date. Its technology offers dramatic cost, resource and energy advantages over traditional silicon. Now for the first time, it is economically feasible to embed intelligence in everyday products thereby transforming the consumer experience."

Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Vinod serves on the boards of, eASIC among other private companies. Vinod has established Khosla Ventures which will focus on traditional Silicon Valley investments like silicon, internet, IT and mobile technologies as well as new cleantech investments.

Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, a Master's in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business



Rob Chandra

"Kovio's many technical break-throughs coupled with a very entrepreneurial management team has the potential to deliver innovative products to enterprises and consumers for many years ahead. For the first time in the semiconductor industry, we can envision printed integrated circuits that are produced at a fraction of the cost and energy consumption of traditional silicon."

Rob Chandra is a Managing Partner in Bessemer's Menlo Park office. Since entering the venture capital industry in 1996, Rob has been involved with 19 early-stage investments that have gone public or have been acquired by public companies.

Rob is the founding managing partner of the firm's investment practice in China and India where he recruited an experienced local team, established the offices, led investments in Anant Raj, BA Systems, Rico Auto, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, New Vernon Capital, Sarovar, and Shriram EPC, and contributed to the firm's investment in FG Wireless. Rob is active in the semiconductor industry and led the firm's investments in Avnera, Berkeley Design, PA Semi, and Summit Micro. Rob is also interested in printed electronics, alternative energy, and consumer driven health care and led the firm's investments in Kovio and Miasolè and is involved with IPC – The Hospitalists Company.

Over his career, Rob has helped build companies in a variety of industries. He was involved with communications equipment ventures such as Altiga (acquired by Cisco), Catena (acquired by Ciena), NBX (acquired by 3Com), and Wavesmith Networks (acquired by Ciena). He has experience with semiconductor investments such as Envoy (acquired by TI), LightLogic (acquired by Intel), Mellanox (IPO), Mobilian (acquired by Intel), and Morphics (acquired by Infineon). Rob has also been involved with consumer internet start-ups such as BuyerZone.com (acquired by Reed Elsevier),Direct Hit (acquired by Ask Jeeves), SmarterKids.com (IPO), MotherNature.com (IPO) and Centra (IPO), and a health care investment, American Hearing Centers (acquired by HearUSA).

Prior to joining Bessemer, Rob was a general partner with Commonwealth Capital Ventures, which he joined after 10 years of industry experience. Rob was an engagement manager with McKinsey & Company in their Los Angeles and then Palo Alto offices where he served high tech and health care related clients. Previously, Rob spent three years with Accenture working in their San Francisco, London, and then New York offices where he served financial services and high tech clients. Rob worked for IBM in sales and marketing where he focused on the Unix workstation product line. Early in his career, Rob worked in the strategic planning department for Lucky Stores which was acquired by Albertsons, the nation's second largest grocery chain.

Rob holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from University of California at Berkeley. In his spare time, Rob is active in Palo Alto youth sports and coaches little league baseball. He roots for the 49ers and Giants, plays golf, has an interest in global politics, and enjoys reading.

Here are links to two recent podcast interviews of Rob conducted by PodTech.net:
» Rob's view on the state of venture capital
» Rob's view on global entrepreneurship.

Ariel Maislos

Ariel Maislos is the founder and CEO of Pudding Inc, a provider of voice infrastructure technologies. He is also the founder of Anobit Technologies Ltd., a provider of Flash Memory technologies. Previously Ariel was the founder and president of Passave Inc., the technology and market leader in Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) access solutions, founded in 2001 and acquired by PMC Sierra in 2006. A graduate of the prestigious Talpiot Program of the Israel Defense Force (IDF), he served in one of the elite R&D laboratories of the IDF, developing advanced and innovative digital communication systems.

Ariel holds a BSc in Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science with Honors from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an MBA from Tel-Aviv University.

Ariel has filed several patents in the fields of digital communications, chip design and internet services.

Joe Jacobson

Joseph Jacobson is Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he is co-PI of the Center for Bits and Atoms and leads the Molecular Machine Group. His group at MIT is focused on pioneering the field of Avogadro Scale Engineering with applications in novel computing machines and synthetic biology.

Jacobson received his PhD in Physics from MIT and was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford in the area of Quantum Optics. He is the recipient of a 1999 Technology Review TR100 Award for Innovation, The 2000 Gutenberg Prize and a 2001 Discover Award. He has authored over 70 peer reviewed papers and conference proceedings in the fields of femotosecond lasers, quantum optics, molecular electronics, nano-chemistry and synthetic DNA. In the private sector Jacobson was co-founder of E Ink, Kovio and Codon Devices and is a founding board member of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) which is focused on developing a $100 laptop for kids.

Stephen N. David

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Mr. David graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science degree. After graduation, he joined P&G as a sales representative in the Omaha PS&D District. After taking a leave of absence when he served as a Captain, U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in 1971, he rejoined the Company as a sales rep in 1973. He was promoted to District Field Representative for the Omaha PS&D District in 1975, then Unit Manager for the Minneapolis PS&D District, and District Manager, Los Angeles PS&D in 1979.

His career at P&G has spanned many diverse assignments and country postings. In 1982 as Senior Project Manager, Customer Services, Mr. David led the deployment of the first personal computers for the Company and helped train the advertising and sales departments on how to use them to help solve real business problems. In 1986 he was named Country Manager P&G Hellas (Greece), and in 1989, General Manager-Arabian Peninsula.

Mr. David returned to the U.S. in 1992 when he became Vice President-Fabric Conditioners, P&G USA and then in 1993 was given a special assignment as Vice President in the Strengthening Global Effectiveness program. In 1998 he was appointed Senior Vice President Customer Business Development and in 1999 he was named Global Customer Development Officer with global responsibility for the Company?s sales organization.

Mr. David's experience in line management and Customer Business Development, combined with his personal passion for IT and involvement in the current business-to business work, contributed to his being named, effective July 1, 2000, as Chief Information Officer and Business-To-Business Officer with overall responsibility for P&G's Internet strategy. This appointment reflects the increasing importance of information technology in accelerating sales growth and managing costs. It also positions P&G to capitalize on tremendous opportunities in the business-to-business arena where a faster, more efficient, and seamless supply chain can be created.

Mr. David has served on a number of Boards and Advisory Committees, including Ahold USA, Transora, Global Commerce Initiative, Uniform Code Council (UCC), Hewlett Packard, Information Week, Inroads, the University Of Texas MBA School, the Cincinnati Arts Festival, Cincinnati United Way, and Classicway Girls Basketball. Currently, Mr. David is the Chairman of Iomega, a Senior Advisory for BCG, sits on several high tech startup companies Boards in Silicon Valley and the Board of IFTF. Recent awards include Salomon Smith Barney Technology Group's CIO of the Year for 2002, one of the twenty-five most influential executives by Consumer Goods Technology magazine, and #3 in the 'Power 50' by Executive Technology magazine in 2003.

Technical Consultants

Monty Cleeves
Technical Advisor to Kovio

James Montague (Monty) Cleeves, is no stranger to innovation and the development of disruptive semiconductor solutions. As the author of more than 50 patents, Monty is an out-of-the box thinker with more than 25 years of experience in designing and deploying new semiconductor technologies.

Most recently, Monty was the director of process integration at Matrix Semiconductor, where he made critical technical contributions to the development and commercialization of the world's first 3D integrated circuit. The project included managing a team of 20 engineers and a $10M annual budget. Prior to Matrix, Monty was the director of cathode engineering at Candescent where he led the process transition from 100 mm to 150 mm to 320 x 340 mm substrates. He has also held senior positions at Cypress Semiconductors, National Semiconductors, and Fairchild. He developed three generations of interconnect systems at Cypress Semiconductors and was the operations manager for over half of the development line. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Santa Clara.

Vivek Subramanian
Technical Advisor to Kovio

Vivek Subramanian received his BS in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University in 1994. He received his MS and PhD in electrical engineering, in 1996 and 1998 respectively, from Stanford University.

Dr. Subramanian co-founded Matrix Semiconductor, Inc., in 1998. Since 1998, he has been at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical engineering and Computer Sciences. His research interests include advanced CMOS devices and technology and polysilicon thin film transistor technology for displays and vertical integration applications. His current research focuses on organic electronics for display, low-cost logic, and sensing applications. He has authored or co-authored more than 40 research publications and patents.

Dr. Subramanian is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and has served on the technical committee for the Device Research Conference and the International Electron Device Meeting. In 2002, he was nominated to Technology Review's list of top 100 young innovators (the TR100), and his work at Matrix Semiconductor was nominated to the Scientific American SA50 list for visionary technology. In 2003, he was nominated to the National Academy of Engineering's "Frontiers of Engineering", and was awarded a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award (CAREER).

Vivek resides in Orinda, CA with his human, canine, and feline family. He enjoys woodworking, driving his electric vehicle and is an active advocate of alternative transportation solutions and animal rights. He enjoys playing touch football and squash.

Leigh Turner
Technical Advisor to Kovio

Leigh Turner is a graduate of the University of Adelaide having received his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering in 1994. He has been an active researcher, developer and visionary champion of RFID technologies for over 25 years having pioneered several novel HF / UHF RFID concepts and highly successful commercial products. Leigh holds numerous RFID related patents and is a Member of the IEEE, including the MTTS and APS.  After a stint in academia he founded Invertech Electronics Ltd in 2000, an Australian based R&D and RFID technology consultancy company. His diverse international clients include several leading high profile companies such as UPM Kymmene / UPM Raflatac.

Leigh is well known by everyone of significance in the RF identification industry for his innovations and contributions to many ISO/IEC and MIT Auto-ID Center / EPCglobal RFID standards. He maintains a passionate interest in antennas, electromagnetics, RF and microwave engineering, RFID systems architectures and CMOS IC design including emerging fully printed “silicon ink” TFT label embodiments; all with a particular focus on optimizing future very low cost RFID / EAS labels and systems.