GSA Silicon Series Luncheon | Austin Speakers

Henry Derovanessian

Henry Derovanessian has more than 25 years of work history in planning and managing implementation of innovative product strategies and new business development initiatives around emerging and advanced technologies which enable delivery of digital media content over a broadband or broadcast network.

Mr. Derovanessian is currently the VP Engineering at DIRECTV where he manages the development and validation of advanced set top box platforms such as networked High Definition DVRs that deliver Multi Room Viewing experience. Henry is also the President of the recently formed RVU Alliance. The Alliance advances the use of the RVU technology to ensure interoperability and a consistent user interface among devices for whole home premium television entertainment.

Previously, Mr. Derovanessian was the Vice President Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Conexant Systems overseeing business unit's marketing and sales activities for system solutions that allow Cable, Satellite and Telco operators provide entertainment, communications, and information services for their subscribers. Mr. Derovanessian was responsible for overseeing business unit's overall strategy, new product definition plans and P&L for the set-top box, and digital television product lines. Before joining Conexant Systems Mr. Derovanessian was the Vice President of engineering at Sony Electronics. While at Sony Henry was in charge of development of Sony’s satellite and cable set top box receivers, architected and managed development of ATSC and OpenCableTM front-end subsystems for Sony Digital TV platforms, and Sony's first OpenCableTM certified high definition digital cable video recorder deployed in retail in North America. At General Instrument Corporation Mr. Derovanessian played a key role establishing the ATSC digital television standard as a member of the Grand Alliance.

Patrick Moorhead

Patrick Moorhead is vice president and senior marketing fellow in the Office of Strategy at AMD, developing corporate strategy for a variety of cross-divisional initiatives with long-term industry impact.

Moorhead joined AMD in 2000 as vice president of desktop and mobile strategic marketing where he led the marketing strategy for the AMD Athlon XP and Mobile Athlon processors. One year later, he assumed the position of vice president of consumer advocacy, leading AMD's ongoing programs to put end users at the forefront of the industry's technology discussions. Moorhead led the True Performance Initiative which provided end users a better explanation of the benefits and measurement of CPU performance. The CPU model numbering system is still in use today at AMD and established itself as the de-facto industry standard. Moorhead also served as vice president of global channel marketing where he led AMD's first global channel tiering, marketing, and benefits program, the AMD Solution Provider Program. He was recognized as CRN's and VARBusiness' Channel Chief. Moorhead then led the advanced marketing group where he developed the strategy behind AMD's experiential platform marketing approach and also AMD's social media strategy, as well as tackling a major industry issue, notebook battery life disclosures.

Before joining AMD, Moorhead held a variety of marketing leadership positions spanning consumer and enterprise computer hardware, software and services at Compaq Computer Corporation, AT&T/NCR and the AltaVista Company.

Moorhead has served on the executive boards of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the American Electronics Association (AEA). He currently chairs the board of the St. David's Medical Center in Austin, TX.

Sandeep Shah

Mr. Sandeep Shah is the Director of Marketing and Applications in the Communications and Computing Business Unit (CCBU) in Marvell Semiconductor’s Data Communications Group. Mr. Shah has more than 18 years of marketing, application and design engineering experience with semiconductor companies – including more than 5 years at Marvell serving in a variety of product management positions. Mr. Shah’s current responsibilities at Marvell include managing several application processor vertical market segments such as Mobile Internet Devices, netbooks, eReaders/eBooks, tablets, IP surveillance, nettops, Thin Client Computing and the automotive market. Previous to Marvell, Mr. Shah held marketing and engineering positions at various semiconductor companies including Raza Microelectronics, SandCraft, MMC Networks, and Intel. Mr. Shah holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Dr. Naveed Sherwani

Dr. Sherwani brings over 23 years of experience in technical engineering and general management to his position as President and CEO of Open-Silicon. Prior to co-founding Open-Silicon, Dr. Sherwani was the founder and General Manager of Intel Microelectronics Services where he led efforts to promote the use of disciplined ASIC methodologies to improve design efficiency and time-to-market.

Naveed co-architected the Intel microprocessor design methodology and environment that has been used in various leading microprocessors. Prior to joining Intel, he worked as a consultant for various telecommunications and computer companies, mainly focusing on ASIC design flow and cell library design to improve time-to-market. He also served as a Professor at Western Michigan University, where his research concentrated on VLSI Physical Design Automation, combinatorics, and graph algorithms.

Dr. Sherwani is the author of the main textbook on Physical Design, which is widely used at major universities around the world. In addition, he has authored or co-authored 3 books and over 100 articles on various aspects of Physical Design Automation and ASICs.

In last 15 years, he has been a frequent speaker at DAC, ICCAD, International Conference on VLSI and other major conferences around the world.

Dr. Sherwani received his Ph.D from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Thomas Sonderman

Thomas Sonderman is Vice President of Manufacturing Systems and Technology at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. In this role, he has global responsibility for development, integration, support and scalability of the company’s 300mm manufacturing systems, focusing on maximizing collaboration, efficiencies and output.

Sonderman joined GLOBALFOUNDRIES after more than 15 years with AMD, where he held numerous management and engineering positions. Most recently he served as Director of Automated Precision Manufacturing (APM) Technology.

Prior to joining AMD, Sonderman worked as a process control engineer for Monsanto Chemical Inc. He has a broad range of experience in the area of manufacturing automation and its application to high-volume semiconductor fabrication. He is a highly sought-after speaker at industry conferences and is member of two advisory committees at the University of Texas: Chemical Engineering and Science, Technology and Society. Sonderman is the author of over 40 patents/patents pending and has published numerous articles in the area of automated control and manufacturing technology.

Sonderman received a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri in 1986 and a master’s in electrical engineering from National Technological University in 1991.

Tyson Tuttle

Mr. Tuttle serves as Chief Operating Officer and is responsible for managing Silicon Laboratories' IC design team and three business units. Mr. Tuttle previously was the Vice President of the broadcast products including the audio and video product families. Mr. Tuttle joined Silicon Laboratories in 1997 as a senior design engineer for the company's initial product, the silicon direct access arrangement. Since 1999, Mr. Tuttle has served in a variety of product management and marketing leadership positions. Previously, Mr. Tuttle held senior design positions at Crystal Semiconductor and Broadcom Corporation where he focused on high-speed mixed-signal circuit design for hard disk drive read channel and Ethernet applications. Mr. Tuttle holds an M.S. in electrical engineering from UCLA and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He has 122 patents issued or pending in the areas of RF and mixed-signal.