Team members
The Company has assembled seasoned professionals, each with decades of experience in their respective fields.
Board of Directors
Hans von Känel
Ph.D. in natural sciences at ETH Zürich in 1978; post-doctoral Associate at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1979 - 1981; senior researcher at ETH Zürich 1981-2002; ordinary professor of physics at the Politecnico di Milano 2002-2007; CTO of the start-ups Epispeed 2003-2010 and PileGrowth Tech 2012-2015; 400+ scientific publications in surface & interface physics, semiconductor physics, nanotechnology and epitaxial growth; 20 patent applications.
Patrick Scherrer
Former CEO at Widmann Associates (2004-2013), a corporate advisory firm dedicated to venture capital funds (Vinci Capital/Renaissance, Wellington Partners) and corporations. Patrick developed several investments in the technology and life-sciences sectors, including Actelion, Axovan, Endoart, immatics, Sensimed, Symetis, Evolva and Anergis among others.
Hans Brändle
CEO Meyer-Burger (SWX), former CEO of Oerlikon-Coating PhD. Solid State Physics at ETH-Zurich (1986). Research associate ETHZ (1986-1990). Postdoc at IBM Almaden Research Center, San-Jose, USA.
Charles Champion
Former Airbus Operations SAS President, President of the Board ISAE-SupAero, Toulouse ISAE-SUPAERO (1978), M.Sc. Stanford University (1979), life-long experience in aerospace. Head of the A380 programme, until the successful certification of the A380 in 2006, then he was Executive Vice President in charge of Customer Services.
Management
Philippe Le Corre
Graduated from ISAE-SUPAERO (1979), Mr Le Corre has a life-long experience in Defense/Aerospace and Information Technology. Former Dassault Aviation, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM and Electronics Data Systems amongst others.
Zoltan Czigler
M.Sc. in Engineering Mathematics; MBA from INSEAD in 2000. Former CFO in several VC-funded early-stage technology-based ventures, including Kuros Biosurgery AG in Zurich, Sensimed SA in Lausanne, Anergis SA in Lausanne, ChromaCon AG in Zurich.
Manolis Choumas
Low-T bonding and Epitaxy M.Sc. Chalmers University of Technology, Former Senior Development Engineer at Microsemi Semiconductor Corp.
Jorge Neves
M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal; 8+ years of R&D experience in radiation detectors and electronics for particle physics and medical imaging technologies at LIP, Portugal, in collaboration with CERN and EPFL in Switzerland.
Nasser Razek
Former Operation Development Manager at EVG. Diplom in Experimental and Nuclear Physics at the University of Cairo, Egypt (1993), M.Sc. at the M-L University of Halle-Wittenberg (1999) and PhD in Solid-State Physics (2006) at Leipzig University, Germany. 17+ years of experience in the semiconductor industry (R&D), with focus on wafer-bonding process.
Naomi Vouillamoz
M.Sc. in Structural Geology at Neuchâtel University (2006), PhD in seismology/microtectonics at Fribourg University (2015), Switzerland. Five academic awards. FNS postdoc fellow at the Institute for Geophysics of Stuttgart University, Germany (2015-2018). 12+ years of experience in transversal and applied research projects using multi-disciplinary approaches.
Scientific and Industry Advisory Board
Daniel Dubreuil
Chief Digital Officer Product and Services at Safran Group. Former Airbus Director of the Task Force A380.
André Rubbia
PhD at MIT, Cambridge, USA, 1993; Research Physicist at CERN (1993-1998); Associate (1998) and Full (2003) Professor of particle physics at ETHZ. Involved in eight large projects at CERN acceleretors. Prof. Rubbia has constructed and performed experiments at the Gran Sasso (Italy) and Canfranc (Spain) Underground Laboratories. He has pioneered and successfully led the development of deep underground observatories for neutrino and dark matter detection.
Adolfo Fucci
M.Sc. in Electronics. Honorary member of CERN. More than 40 years experience in electronics design of computer architectures, specialised processores, complex readout systems and real-time high-speed data acquisition in prestigious research centers (Olivetti/Italy and CERN). Contribution to technology transfer efforts from research centers to industry.
Hans Brändle
PhD. Solid State Physics. CEO of Meyer Burger. Former CEO of Oerlikon Balzers (2005-2014).
Harry Diepenmaat
M.Sc. in Integrated Circuits and Electronics, owner and chairman of the Dieco Electronics/Bruco group; co-founder of JIS Nederland, Business Cluster Semiconductors, Innoluce and ShredEDA.
Antoine Herteman
Former Director Renault Battery International, leader of Renault-Nissan engineering center in India. HEC Business School (1981), life-long career at Renault, with leadership in strategical and disruptive big projects the Dacia Logan Program. Independant since 2017, acting in different automotive fields such as vehicles distribution optimization and technical complexity optimization.
Jean J. Botti
CEO of VoltAero SA, former CTO of Airbus Group SE (2006-2016) PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France; M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineerging from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Toulouse, France and M.Sc. in Science Administration from the Central Michigan University, USA.