Keith Evans President and CEO Keith Evans, who received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Purdue University, has a compound semi pedigree that would make anyone in the field envious. Getting his start in the field at the USA's Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio at Wright Patterson AFB, Keith built a world class Air Force research group while at AFRL, where he established a precedent-setting effort in the sensor-based control of MBE crystal growth and published over 200 publications. His decade plus at Wright Pat provided him with uniquely strong ties with all the DoD agencies involved in compound semi R&D, many of which help support Kyma's outstanding research and development in native GaN substrates. Keith left AFRL in 1996 to join a laser startup and has gone on to hold a number of key executive positions in the CS industry that span the entire supply chain including substrates, epitaxial growth, epitaxial growth equipment, and devices. Prior to becoming president and CEO of Kyma Technology, he served as senior VP business development and chief marketing officer for Crystal IS, where he enabled A-round equity financing and scored a key NIST ATP grant. Keith also served as VP of advanced technology at Veeco-St. Paul, where he developed and won funding for that company's Epitaxial Growth Process Integration Center (PIC). When he was VP of operations and advanced technology for QED, Keith drove record production efficiencies, revenues, and profits and proposed the successful merger between QED and Epitaxial Products International, which resulted in the formation of IQE. IQE quickly became the industry's largest compound semiconductor wafer manufacturer and it is still growing, as evidenced by the recent merger with Emcore's epitaxial group and the recent acquisition of MBE Technologies. |