• Demetris Paraskevopoulos, Managing Director
• Ram Banin, Director
• Adi Gamon, Director
• Reuven Marko, Director
• Lloyd Nirenberg, Director
• Bob Osann, Director
• Felix Rosengarten, Director & CFO
• Robert Strain, Director
• Jacob Tanz, Director
• Mammen Thomas, Director
• Rob Abel, Affiliate Member
• Gunnar Hurtig III, Affiliate Member
• Chris Kocher, Affiliate Member

Demetris Paraskevopoulos
Managing Director

Paraskevopoulos has been managing Nif/T during the last ten years. He has over 35 years experience in high tech development and management, in start up company environments as well as large corporations. His experience ranges from new product development and introduction, to extensive operational management in marketing and sales. In addition, he has extensive accomplishments in business development and strategic negotiations. His previous roles included General Manager of Tower Semiconductor USA, Inc. and VP of Business Development at an Internet related startup firm. Earlier positions were VP of Marketing and Sales at National Semiconductor and he held several management positions in technology management and operations at Xerox Corp.

He received a Sc.M. in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Physics from Boston University, an MBA in Financial Economics and Marketing from University of Rochester, and completed post-doctoral studies at MIT. Dr. Paraskevopoulos has 4 patents issued and over 40 professional publications. He is currently an active member of various professional associations, including the Silicon Valley Band of Angels and the Association for Corporate Growth; he has served, or currently serving, on six Boards of Directors.

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Ram Banin
Director

In his 30 years in Silicon Valley Banin was a co-founder, general manager and CEO of private and public companies. Since 2000, he is helping Israeli companies succeed by converting their innovative technologies into profitable products.

In the 1970s Banin participated in the development and deployment of the Arpanet, the 'Granddaddy' of today's Internet. In 1980 he co-founded Daisy Systems, which heralded the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. Daisy grew profitably to $122M and went public in four years. As Senior VP of Corporate Engineering, Banin coordinated multiple products developed by over 400 engineers. The success of Daisy's R&D center in Israel paved the way for many Israeli startups.

From 1992 to 1999 Banin served as general manager, president and CEO at TCSI. His mission was to transition this $60M public company from a custom software house to a product company.

Banin holds a Ph.D. and M.A in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as M.Sc. in Nuclear Physics and B.Sc. in Physics and Math from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

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Adi Gamon
Director

Gamon has over 30 years experience in high-tech enterprises, both mature and start-up. He has served on the Board of Directors of Effective Rewards, EquipNet (sold to MKS), GlobalFactory, and MyDTV (sold to Live Universe), as well as on the Advisory Board of RightOrder and Senvid. He was CEO of Carnelian, Inc., the first spin-off from Paul Allen's Interval Research, which developed an Internet-enabled customer-communications system.

Previously, Adi was co-founder and co-manager of Chip Express Corporation, where he was responsible for all the business activities of this semi-custom chip start-up, including fund raising, finance, marketing and sales. He has also served time in executive and management positions in larger companies such as AT&T Paradyne (VP and General Manager) and Texas Instruments. He started his involvement in high tech flying for the Israeli Air Force.

Gamon is a serial volunteer, through the Harvard Business Alumni Association, where he received the Award for Volunteer Excellence, and serves on the Steering Committee. Gamon also volunteers through the Clean-Tech Open where he serves as a mentor.

He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science, Math and Economics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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Reuven Marko
Director

Marko has over 25 years experience in high tech development, engineering management, and marketing and sales, as well as an extensive international experience. He has worked for large corporations, start up companies, and eNitiatives, Nif/T's affiliate firm in Israel . He is experienced in intellectual property identification and protection, strategic negotiations, strategic marketing, as well as product definition and corporate positioning. Among his roles are vice president of marketing and sales of Nogatech Ltd., including its IPO, and prior to that with Tower Semiconductor Ltd. where he was key in formulating the company's strategic direction and significantly large agreements negotiated and closed. At National Semiconductor Marko has served as strategic marketing manager, product marketing manager, and chip design manager. Prior to National, Marko served as an officer in the Israeli Air Force.

Marko is Nif/T's resident representative in Israel, as well as the head of the IP Catalyst Program. He holds a BSEE from the Technion in Israel and an MBA from the University of Phoenix. He is a co-inventor in five patents, with several others pending, in the areas of computer architectures, internet, CMOS image sensors and networking, and has published a dozen professional papers.

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Lloyd Nirenberg
Director

Nirenberg has over 25 years experience in the electronics industry as both an engineer and an executive. In 1998, he co-founded IP Valuation, Inc. a firm that provides software for computing the price of Intellectual Property designs. IPV's MediciTM software applies the financial engineering theory of Real Options to solve the contingent claims associated with IP reuse. Previous to IPV, he was Director of Business Development at National Semiconductor, where he took technology acquisition and IP licensing deals from strategy through due diligence and closure. At National, he also served as Director of Strategic Marketing for Wireless Communications.

Nirenberg has General Management experience in packet switching (Tymnet, Inc.), satellite and digital radio industries (Avantek Corp.), and System Engineering expertise in digital signal processing and packet switching (Hughes, Aerospace Corp.). He has 8 IEEE papers published. He has a B.S. (EE) from the University of Michigan, and M.S.(EE) and Ph.D.(EE) degrees from UCLA.

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Bob Osann
Director

Osann is a veteran business executive with over 35 years of marketing, sales, engineering, and intellectual property experience. He was CEO at MeshDynamics, a leading wireless mesh equipment manufacturer, from 2004-2005. He was the founder and initial CEO of Lightspeed Semiconductor, the first Structured ASIC company, and also served as a Vice President at P-CAD, SunRise Imaging, Aptix, Prolinx, and JigSaw Tek. From 1987 through 1989 he was a key consultant at Actel.  In 1981, he founded Assisted Technology, the first PLD software company, which merged with P-CAD in 1985.

Osann has domain expertise in FPGA/PLD/ASIC/DSP, wireless networks, smart phones, MEMS sensors and security solutions, streaming video, and IC packaging. 

He has a BSEE degree from Cornell University.  He has 31 patents issued and 17 patents pending.

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Felix Rosengarten
Director & CFO

Rosengarten has over 35 years of senior management experience in a technical environment with emphasis in all functions of the high tech industry, with significant emphasis over the last eight years as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of finance and all administrative functions. He has been responsible for Finance, Investor Relations, Human Resources, Business Systems & Information Technology, the Purchasing, Facilities, and Security Departments and various administrative matters including all legal interface, and patent management. In addition to the usual fiduciary responsibilities associated with the CFO position, he also has served as Assistant Secretary of the Board of Directors, coordinated with the Compensation Committee of the Board and active in the Audit Committee. He has directly participated as a CFO in equity financing through five preferred share series, two IPO's, a public offering, and a corporate merger.

Rosengarten received a BS (ChemE) from Cornell University, and an MBA from Villanova University.

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Robert Strain
Director

Strain started his career in microwave physics, but entered the world of silicon in 1968 at Bell Labs, where he was responsible for contributions in MOS and CCD technology. He introduced major memory families at Harris Semiconductor and National Semiconductor, and he has been responsible for process development, product development and product management at Fairchild Semiconductor in addition to Harris and National. One of his major projects was guiding the design, construction and staffing of Fairchild's Nagasaki wafer fab, and he has been an internal technological consultant and strategist for all three semiconductor companies. He was also employed by Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (Harlow, Essex, England), and he has chaired international conferences on MOS interfaces and semiconductor manufacturing.

Strain received the BSEE, MSEE and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois, and he has 22 patents, 18 publications and several conference papers.

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Jacob Tanz
Director

Tanz has spent over 32 years in a variety of executive high tech positions. Over the past few years he has been providing strategic consulting services to various high tech organizations. Jacob's experience spans the high tech landscape as President & CEO of Oren Semiconductor, to Executive Sales & Marketing positions with Libit Signal Processing. Jacob drove and led the acquisition of Libit Signal Processing to Texas Instruments in 1999 for $365M.

As a VP of Sales and Marketing at Terayon Communication Corp, Jacob contributed to the growth of the Broadband Communication though the promotion of Cable Modem technology. For 15 years at Intel Corp, he held various positions, from Corporate Business Development specializing in driving Broadband technologies deployment, to Product and Customer marketing positions for Intel's embedded processors and Intel's leading processor family the x86 (80486dx, dx2, dx4). Most of Jacob's early days at Intel were spent in the field working with PC, Military and various commercial customers.

Jacob holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA.

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Mammen Thomas
Director

Thomas brings 32 years of local and international management expertise with technology-driven industries. This includes experience as President, CEO and founder of Propulsion Networks,Inc. President of Silicon Recognition, Director of product, test and reliability at DynaChip Corp.; Sr. VP technology and projects at Elan Microsystems; Director of technology and reliability at TFI, Inc. and Manager of Device integration at AMD; and Senior Project Manager at Keltron. His technical experience covers technology development, technology transfer, manufacturing, product planning, product marketing and project implementation. He has successfully raised multi-million dollar series A funds from venture during his tenure as President and CEO of Propulsion Networks. He has been involved in the implementation of multi-year technology projects with Sprague Electric ( Netherlands), Nippon Precision Circuits ( Japan), Pioneer Video Corporation ( Japan), IMP Microelectronics (US), ABB Haffo ( Sweden), and Austria Microsystems ( Austria). He is an inventor with over 38 patents in semiconductor technology, non-volatile technology, packaging, field programmable elements, large scale integration etc.

He is currently a General Partner Technology and Reliability at MEMTEK, LLC (www.memtek-llc.com) and Director of Thomas Mammen Associates. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of OSA.

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Rob Abel
Affiliate Member

Rob Abel has over 25 years of experience in high technology. He has held executive business development, marketing, and general management positions at Collegis (now SunGard Collegis), Oracle, National Semiconductor, and TRW.

Most recently, Abel was a member of the executive team at Collegis, Inc. the leading provider of Information Technology services to higher education. At Collegis he held several senior positions including Senior Vice President of Client Services, General Manager of Online and Academic Services, and Chief Marketing Officer. Collegis was recently sold to SunGard Data Systems (NASDAQ: SDS).

Abel has been focusing on product development, marketing and business development needs in the Internet market place since 1994. At Oracle he was responsible for developing innovative e-Learning products offered as an ASP service as well as an enterprise platform. At National Semiconductor, Abel worked on corporate market development for Internet-related products. At TRW Abel became head of the advanced computing lab and developed technologies that resulted in $1B new business, and was CEO of a new venture in resource monitoring and mapping.

After leaving SunGard Collegis, Abel founded and is serving as President of the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness (a-hec.org), a non-profit organization focused on promoting innovation in higher education.

Abel has achieved significant recognition in the e-Learning ad higher education industries, has authored and presented papers in numerous conferences and holds several patents. He holds a Master's Degree in Management from Stanford University, a Master's Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor's Degree in Computational Physics from Carnegie-Mellon University. He has been honored as a National Merit Scholar, a Hughes Aircraft Master Fellow, and has received the TRW Chairman's Award for Innovation.

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Gunnar Hurtig III
Affiliate Member

Having over 38 years in the high tech business, his unique blend of leadership has produced outstanding returns for many investors, shareholders and customers. His semiconductor experience dates to 1964. He founded NINIC Corp in 1964 and sold it to Fairchild. He founded Kinetic Technology and sold it to Baldwin Electronics. He joined Fairchild in 1976 and held positions in engineering, sales and marketing. After an assignment in Tokyo, he became director of marketing for the $120M Large Scale IC group. In 1979 he became western regional manager for Hitachi and managed semiconductor and display sales of $80M through 45 salesmen.

Hurtig spent most of the '80s as a professional investor. He was a general partner of two $90M+ funds at Weiss, Peck and Greer specializing in hardware and software startups. After 8 years in venture capital, he formed his own business, Incites Ventures, and returned to the semiconductor business as a board director and interim executive. He was a director with C-Cube Microsystems from '90-'94 including a stint as interim President and participating in the IPO, and he held a similar role at Video Seven in '91-93. Gil Amelio recruited him at National Semiconductor as SVP, Strategic Planning and Market Development until his departure in 1996. He, and two other investors, purchased Optaphone Systems in 1999 where he served as active Chairman till it was sold to Zhone Technologies in 2001.

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Chris Kocher
Affiliate Member

Kocher is the co-founder and managing director of Grey Heron, a venture accelerator consulting firm. He has over twenty years of hands-on and executive experience in technology, marketing, business development and general management. With a Columbia MBA in marketing and international business, Kocher went on to become an HP marketing executive. During ten years at HP, he had management responsibility for laser printers, office software, HP PCs, third party programs, and the leading-edge HP NewWave. Kocher went on to be a VP/GM at Symantec with responsibility for one of the independent product groups.

Grey Heron clients range from pre-funded to mid-stage startups. In a typical collaboration, they develop or tune a company's business plan, identify core strategic issues, facilitate introductions to VCs and potential partners, help recruit the executive staff, and act as ongoing company advisors. Grey Heron has helped more than 50 companies since 1993.

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