Strategies Unlimited Posts Agenda for Annual Strategies In Light Meet
Jo Ann McDonald, Founding EditorJanuary 5, 2005...Make your reservations now for the annual "must attend" Strategies
In Light (SIL) conference which will be held at the San Francisco Airport
Marriott Hotel in beautiful Burlingame,
California USA (I know of Burlingame's beauty first hand as Burlingame
is this founding editor's old home town! I also had the pleasure of consulting
to Strategies Unlimited and naming and helping coordinate the show when SIL
first conceived of SIL six years ago). Strategies Unlimited's intrepid GaN
and HB-LED guru, Bob Steele, has again put together an excellent agenda
which you can view via this link. To your viewing left, in this issue's McDonald Report, is an interview with Bob on what to expect at this year's SIL conference. The Tuesday/Wednesday full day sessions
start with his annual market forecast, then a full review of applications
and trends, includes country activities and national programs, and then winds
up tackling the technical issues head on. PennWell's SIL will also feature
two pre-conference workshops this year. The morning workshop on Monday, February
7th will be on Optical System Design for LEDs followed by an afternoon workshop
on Drivers for LEDs. So mark your calendar and pick up the phone or email your
reservations. If this meet is anything like the first one six years ago, you
better reserve your seat early. As is so often the case with this sort of top flight executive
meet, the real action is usually in the hallways and at the breaks and meals
so generously provided for by the roster of SIL
sponsors, which you'll note includes our LIGHTimes and SolidStateLighting.net.
A comprehensive promo with hotlinks to whatever you need to get your reservations
in on time is at the bottom of this newsletter. Our business and editorial
staff looks forward to seeing you there!
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Keith Evans Becomes President/CEO of Kyma
Jo Ann McDonaldJanuary 5, 2005...Update your contact list as longtime industry, really cool guy, nitride
material growth expert and wide bandgap (WBG) community catalyst, Keith Evans
Ph.D. packs his bags and heads for his new assignment in Research Triangle Park
and starts to settle into his new assignment as President and CEO of Kyma
Technologies, Inc. of Raleigh, North Carolina USA. Yes, he's really
all those things! Keith joins a strong technical team that remains headed by co-founders Mark Williams who serves as COO (Mark hailed originally from NCSU and started Kyma with his famed NCSU professor Jerry Cuomo) and Andrew (Drew) Hanser who also got his start in GaN-related substrate technology with NCSU's wide bandgap guru Professor Bob Davis, who is now at Carnegie Mellon. Keith has over 20 years experience in the compound semi
industry and has held several key executive positions from operations, technology,
and business development. He began his colorful career at the famed US Air Force
Research Labs at Wright Pat AFB where he led a group of scientists and engineers
focused on advancing the technology of MBE for novel CS device applications.
Keith then moved into the commercial sector via stints in epi wafer supply (QED/IQE)
epi growth equipment (Veeco's MBE equipment arm) and in laser manufacturing
via SLI. His most recent post was serving Crystal IS as Sr. VP, Business Development
and as their Chief Marketing Officer. Keith generously gives of his time to
help advance the industry as a whole and is well known as a highly regarded
WBG technology leader and WBG community catalyst. He organized our recent Wide
Bandgap Business Opportunities Workshop as a prelude to the annual CS
Outlook conference which was held Dec. 6-8th in Dallas, Texas. (The online
post of those proceedings will be available shortly to Outlook attendees, by
the way. Keith has received many inquiries asking for the workshop slides. Contact
tomg@compoundsemi.com for your password). We would like to publicly thank
Keith again for the excellent job he did bringing the WBG Biz Opps Workshop
together and wish this WBG leader the very best in his new role guiding Kyma
to its next stage in GaN substrate development. If you want to contact Keith,
his new coordinates are: Keith R. Evans, Ph.D., President & CEO, Kyma Technologies,
Inc., 8829 Midway West Road, Raleigh, NC 27617 USA, General company phone: 919-789-8880
and his new email is: evans@kymatech.com. We had a great indepth chat with Keith, Mark and Drew today as Keith logged in his first 1.5 days at the Kyma help, and that conversation will be featured in an upcoming McDonald Report underscoring the remarkable progress Kyma is already making in their selling their two inch GaN wafers to blue laser, LED and electronic device developers (yes, these are the real thing! Not just layers of GaN) with larger diameter substrates wafers in development. January 3, 2005...Representative of caring USA semiconductor industry corporations, Texas Instruments
of Dallas, Texas USA announced
on December 30th that it was making a $500,000 donation to the American Red
Cross International Response Fund for immediate and emergency care for victims
of South Asia’s devastating tsunami. The company is also matching dollars
donated by its employees for the same cause. “Our hearts go out to the
many victims of this terrible tragedy,” said Rich Templeton, TI President
and CEO. “I join TIers around the world in offering prayers and condolences
to the many who have lost so much.” TI operates globally in more than
25 countries including several impacted by the tsunami, but no TI sites or employees
were affected, and operations continue as normal. TI employees in India, Malaysia
and Singapore collected clothing, blankets, linens and other necessities that
have been shipped to the worst-hit families. Additionally, diversity initiatives
across TI are planning their own fundraising activities to benefit those in
the region.
If your company is in a position to help... among the many good agencies
directing resources to this disaster, we highly recommend sending donations
to either UNICEF, which is the United Nations
Children's Fund, and the American Red Cross.
UNICEF has issued an $81 million appeal,
it has already launched a major effort to identify unaccompanied children in
the area, and has already sent five planeloads of UNICEF supplies to Indoneasia
and Dri Lanka. Governed by volunteers and supported by community donations,
the American Red Cross is dedicated to
saving lives and helping people prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies
throughout the world. Through its 1.2 million volunteers and 30,000 employees,
the Red Cross annually mobilizes relief to families affected by more than 67,000
disasters, trains almost 12 million people in lifesaving skills and exchanges
more than 1 million emergency messages between U.S. military service personnel
and their families. The Red Cross is the largest supplier of blood and blood
products to more than 3,000 hospitals across the nation and also assists victims
of international disasters and conflicts at locations worldwide.
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Philips Reports Lumileds' Impressive Financial Performance for FY '04
Jo Ann McDonald, Founding EditorDecember 23, 2004...One of the parent companies of Lumileds Lighting, Philips (the other being
Agilent) has broken precedence and reported the financial performance of its
offspring, and that performance was impressive. For the 2004 fiscal year that
just ended for Philips, Lumileds reported sales of $280 million, representing
a 43% annual growth, and their net income was $62 million, which as a percentage
of sales, represents 22% of sales. The figures were released during a presentation
to analysts by Peter van Strijp, Executive VP and CEO BU Solid State Lighting
at Philips on the occasion of their annual Analysts
Day. This was the first time Lumileds' revenues have been publicly reported
and the San Jose, California based Lumileds is justly proud of their numbers,
as is their parent company, Philips, which clearly made Solid State Lighting
(SSL) the hot topic of this particular Analysts
Day gathering in Europe. The presenters included the highest ranking executives
of Philips and the entire proceedings are available online, a webcast replay
of which will be available
online via this location for a year. An entire section was devoted to Philips'
strategic view of the SSL industry and Philips' role in it. Commentary on the
entire presentation and on Lumileds' performance and role in the industry will
be covered in detail in an upcoming McDonald Report. In the
meantime, we recommended you hit the above hotlinks and view the Philips presentations
for yourself. The pictures alone tell an incredible success story for SSL applications. Jacques Pankove Officially Retires and Signs Astralux Over to Rande Treece
Jo Ann McDonald, Founding EditorDecember 20, 2004...GaN LED and HBT pioneer, Jacques
Pankove, who has often been honored by our industry, has recently officially
retired from Astralux, the company
from which he has so wonderfully served the wide bandgap community since his
retirement from serving as a Professor at the University of Colorado in the
USA. Indeed a world citizen and longtime good friend to this editor, Jacques
and his wife Ethyl, who has been his partner in Astralux, continue to enjoy
good health and are watching the company they formed now be run by Randolph
E. Treece, Ph.D (Rande) whom Jacques has mentored in recent years to take over
the company. The right time has evidently come, and as of October, Rande became
owner of Astralux. What Astralux does is what it has always done, leverage its
core expertise in research and development and help young companies grow and
successfully spin out from Astralux, as they did with their first company, PowerSicel,
Inc., back in December of 2001. What PowerSicel did was leverage Jacques and
Rande's expertise in SiC transistor technology and a commitment of funds with
that of an Astralux employee, Dr. John Torvik, who serves as PowerSicel's co-founder
and President/CEO). For this, Astralux received an equity stake in PowerSicel
and commenced to raise additional funds to commercialize the transistor technology.
PowerSicel and Astralux continue to work closely together.
That model will be repeated often at Astralux in the years ahead and more people
like John Torvik are precisely what Rande's looking for. Astralux is essentially
a cutting edge hothouse. They bring technology from the concept stage
to the point that a high-growth company can be essentially birthed (spun off)
from Astralux. "We will grow value in Astralux by repeating this process.
We are currently working on the early stages of three main technology families.
The first is hybrid substrates, the combination of thin slices of one material
bonded to another to achieve the benefits of both. We have been funded by ONR
and the Air Force to develop SiC related hybrid substrates," said Rande
Treece. The second area of research involves the exciting devices that can be
developed based vacuum electron emission from negative electron affinity (NEA)
surfaces. "Through the appropriate engineering it should be possible
to create an electronic cooler, or a direct-thermal-to-electrical converter,
or (hopefully) both using GaN-based NEA materials. We are currently funded by
DARPA to work on this and have also received funds from the Office of the Secretary
of Defense related to these activities," he explained. "The
third area is based on UV-based bio-defense systems based on electron-pumped
UV emission. We are working with California-based Photon Systems, Inc. to develop
a UV laser that will be included in an analysis tool to detect biological agents.
This work is supported by DARPA. We are also working on a bio-decontamination
tool with the Air Force." Astralux currently has 7 issued patents and
5 in the hopper, which we covered in detail in our latest issue of LIGHTinsight.
Rande can be reached via www.Astraluxinc.com
his tel is: +1 303-413-1440 and email is rtreece@astraluxinc.com.
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