Dr. Joel Birnbaum

Dr. Joel Birnbaum held a number of senior management positions with Hewlett-Packard, including a decade as Director of HP Laboratories and Senior Vice President for R&D, followed by appointments as chief scientist and senior technical advisor to the CEO. He was one of the originators of the concept of “pervasive computing,” as well as concepts and technologies which underlie cloud computing, and has been a vigorous proponent of close integration of measurement, communication, and computation technologies. Prior to HP, he spent 15 years at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center, where he last served as Director of Computer Sciences. While at IBM, he was the first project leader for Reduced Instruction Set Computing, which he later brought to commercial fruition at HP.

Joel is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society of Engineering (UK). He has fellowships in several societies including the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE. He has been awarded the IEEE Weber Prize and an honorary doctorate from Technion University of Israel. He currently serves on several boards including the International Vocal Arts Institute, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, QLogic, and the SETI Institute.

Joseph Fjelstad

Joseph Fjelstad is president and founder of Verdant Electronics, a company which is redefining the order of electronic packaging processes. Prior to this, he was co-founder and CEO of SiliconPipe, a leader in high-speed interconnection technologies. He was an early member of Tessera Technologies, a company which develops innovative packaging technologies that transform next-generation electronic devices through chip-scale, 3D, and wafer-level packaging technology, as well as high-density substrate and silent air cooling technology. At Tessera, he was appointed to the first corporate fellowship.

In a career in electronic interconnection and packaging technology spanning over 35 years, he has authored several books on packaging technology and flexible circuits, contributed over 250 articles to industry publications, and authored or co-authored more than 130 U.S. patents. He serves on the advisory board of Advanced Packaging and Circuit World, and as a member of the International Electronics Roadmap Committee. He is a senior member of the IEEE, the SMTA and MEPTEC, and in 1996 received the IPC President’s Award for his contributions to the IPC and electronics industries.

Dr. Yoshio Nishi

Dr. Yoshio Nishi has been Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility at Stanford University since 2002, following an illustrious career in the microelectronics industry. During two decades at Toshiba which culminated in leadership of the first mass produced CMOS 1Mbit DRAM and 256k SRAM release, he originated novel business strategies including the collocation of R&D and production teams at one site, and pre-competitive partnerships between companies involved in advanced technology commercialization, which have since been widely implemented elsewhere. During nearly ten years at Hewlett-Packard, his high performance CMOS team developed 0.8 to 0.5 micron technologies which enabled the company to commercialize the world’s fastest CMOS RISC machines. At Texas Instruments, he served as Senior Vice President and Director of Research and Development of the Semiconductor Group, and was credited by the COO with transforming R&D to substantially improve the company’s position in the digital signal processor and analog businesses.

He has published over 200 papers, several books, and holds over 70 patents. He is an IEEE Fellow, and has been awarded both the IEEE’s Jack Morton Award and the Robert Noyce Medal, as well as the SEMI Lifetime Achievement Award.

Neerja Raman

Neerja Raman is a Distinguished Scholar at Stanford University with a focus on developing business and leadership models for social entrepreneurs. She spent over two decades in research management at Hewlett-Packard (Scientific Instruments Division and HP Laboratories). For 11 years she directed HPL’s Imaging Systems Laboratory, spearheading and fostering innovations which transformed the role of digital printing both technically and in the marketplace.

Ms. Raman has served on the advisory committee for Cyber-Infrastructure, National Science Foundation, an initiative to improve science education in the United States. Her awards include the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business (2009), the Distinguished Citizen Award from Federation of Indo Americans (2006), and she has been inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame (2005).

Ms. Raman authors the blog Digital Provide: From Good to Gold which explores how technology, society and business can work in synergy to create dramatic value in the developing world. She published The Practice and Philosophy of Decision Making (2003) and has written extensively on innovation and leadership.

Dr. Heikki Seppä

Dr. Heikki Seppä is a research professor at VTT in Helsinki, Finland, where he has held various academic and research management positions since 1979, with seminal contributions in fields ranging from low temperature electronics and superconductors to low cost electronics for RFID and sensor applications. He played a critical role in the launch of several programs at VTT, including MEMS research (with a focus on silicon-on-insulator technology), near field communications (NFC) for mobile phones, and the unification of telecommunications, sensors, and microelectronics into a single Center for Micro and Nanotechnology. He is vice president for the Low Temperature Quantum Phenomena and Devices Center of Excellence of the Academy of Finland. In addition to leading VTT initiatives with multinational companies such as Nokia, Atmel, and UPM Raflatac, he is a founder of three startup companies in the areas of RFID, NFC, and low temperature devices.

Dr. Seppä has around 100 peer-reviewed publications and nearly 100 patents in addition to over 100 other publications, and has served as advisor to several companies and government agencies including the European Commission. He is a member of the Finnish Academy of Technology and was made Knight, First Class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland, an award given by the president for outstanding service to the country.