Gary Steele, Chairman & CEO
Since 1990 Gary has been founder and CEO or Chairman of 6 Fabless Chip Companies: Acapella Ltd., Microcosm Communications, Phyworks, Nanotech Semiconductor, Foremost Integrated Circuits and HiLight. All pioneered advanced Analog/RF CMOS technology in order to improve performance and lower costs, and all were involved in fiber-optics based Communications or Networking, over Plastic or Glass fibers.
These companies achieved many world’s firsts on performance, and well over 1 billion ICs sold to date.
Gary has a degree in Electronics from the University of Southampton, a pioneer in fiberoptics based communications since the 1970’s.
Derek Hutchins, VP Engineering
Derek has a Masters degree in Microelectronics and over 25 years’ Analogue/IC design and design management experience, mostly at Philips Semiconductors/NXP. Projects included Optical Storage System ICs and 4 generations of Digital TV ‘SoC’ ICs in 90 and 45nm CMOS. Last 10 years in CMOS Fiberoptics IC design and design management.
Christian Rookes, VP Marketing and Business Development
Christian has over 25 years’ experience in optical communications, with roles spanning Marketing, Product Management, Sales and Engineering. Most recently Christian was VP of Product Management at ProLabs, a global optical transceiver company. Christian has worked in both established and start-up companies including Semtech/Gennum, Hewlett Packard/Agilent, Phyworks and Nanotech Semiconductor where he was marketing lead during the creation and deployment of the highly successful PON ICs. Christian has a degree in Electronic Engineering and Physics and multiple patents for optical transceiver innovations to his name.
Richard Clark, Senior Director of Quality and Production
Richard has over 35 years in the semiconductor industry at companies including ST Microelectronics, Microcosm, Nanotech, Foremost-IC and HiLight Semiconductor. Extensive experience in Failure Analysis, Reliability, Product Engineering and Production covering a wide range of semiconductor components from Power MOSFET’s to Microprocessors (Transputers), manufactured in CMOS/BiCMOS technologies down to 28nm. Leading role in bringing ISO9001 accreditation to Microcosm, Nanotech, Foremost-IC and HiLight Semiconductor.
Tim Davey, Senior Director of Applications
Tim has worked in the opto-electronics sector throughout his career in a variety of different roles. Prior to joining HiLight in 2013, Tim worked in the defence industry initially on laser products and later designing imaging sensor ICs and technically leading projects for mission critical applications, holding finally a Principal IC Design Engineer position.
Since joining HiLight, Tim has held a number of roles including Evaluation Group Manager, Senior Applications Engineer and, since 2018, Applications Director.
Tim graduated from Southampton University, UK, a renowned opto-electronics centre of excellence, with a First-Class Honours Masters degree in Electronic Engineering and was awarded an Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) commendation for best-in-class degree performance.
Dr. Ryan Yang, Senior Director for NPI*
Dr. Yang completed his Masters in Microelectronic Systems Design from Liverpool John Moores University in 2007, and was granted a full scholarship for his Electronics PhD at the same University.
He has over 10 years of industrial experience, starting in Agilent Technologies in Malaysia and later at Cambridge Silicon Radio, Cambridge UK as it became part of Qualcomm. For the last 5 years Ryan has managed the Evaluation and Characterisation teams at HiLight, and more recently took overall responsibility for ATE development.
Ryan is a native speaker of Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese and fluent in English and Malay.
*New Products Introduction