2011 Speakers 

Jean Boufarhat

Corporate Vice President of Advanced Micro Devices Process and Circuit Technology

Mr. Jean Boufarhat is Corporate Vice President of Advanced Micro Devices Process and Circuit Technology.  His responsibilities span Silicon Process Technology Enablement, Memory Array, High-Speed IO and Analog/Mixed-Signal Design.  Prior to his current role, Mr. Boufarhat was responsible for ASIC Services and Technology for the Graphic Products Division.  Prior to joining AMD in 2007, Mr. Boufarhat spent ten years at LSI where he was Vice President of IP Solutions.  Before his last role at LSI, Mr. Boufarhat held various management positions in IP development, high-speed mixed-signal design and design methodology.  Before joining LSI, Mr. Boufarhat held various engineering and management positions at Symbios, AT&T and NCR.  Mr. Boufarhat has B. Sc. and M. Sc. Degrees in electrical engineering from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 

Christian P. Cocks

General Manager, WW OEM Engineering & Services, Microsoft

Chris Cocks has taken on leadership of the OEM Engineering Services team within the OEM division reporting to Steve Guggenheimer. Previously Chris was responsible for our OEM Consulting organization and MNA technical sales and services team within OEM Engineering Services. In Chris’s new role he is responsible for our Client, Server and Embedded technical sales and services teams in OEM inclusive of our Field, ODM and MNA accounts.

Chris’s background is a combination of product management, marketing and product development in the games and consumer technology space. Chris joined Microsoft in 1999 and has had positions in several groups including PC Games, Xbox, MSN/Windows Live and most recently OEM Division. He left Microsoft in 2006 to explore other opportunities. Chris rejoined Microsoft in the OEM Division in 2008 after serving as VP and General Manager of the Educational Games & Devices division for LeapFrog Enterprises, a leading educational toys and games company.

Manju Hegde

Corporate Vice President, Fusion Experience Program, AMD

Before joining AMD, Hegde was vice president of CUDA technical marketing at NVIDIA, where he focused on training and enabling researchers and developers to leverage the parallel architecture and performance of the GPU for general purpose applications.

Prior to joining NVIDIA in 2008, Hegde was co-founder and CEO of AGEIA Technologies since 2002, when he began his mission to minimize the challenge of physics in game development. Hegde was also a professor of electrical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and at Louisiana State University.

Hegde earned his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and his Ph. D in Computer Information and Control Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Matt Skynner

Corporate Vice President and General Manager, GPU Division, AMD

Mr. Skynner is responsible for driving AMD’s business in the highly competitive graphics processor market. He has the charter to manage AMD’s GPU product line as well as to grow Market Share and profitability for the business. Mr. Skynner works closely with AMD’s Marketing, Engineering and Sales teams to achieve these goals. Mr. Skynner joined AMD with the acquisition of ATI in 2006 and previously was Vice President of Product Management for AMD’s Graphics Products Group.
Mr. Skynner has over 20 years of experience in the high tech industry. Mr. Skynner joined ATI in May 1998. He held several senior marketing and product management positions including Vice President of Corporate Marketing, and Director of Product Marketing, Desktop Discrete Graphics. Prior to joining ATI, Mr. Skynner held various engineering, sales and marketing positions at Honeywell Limited.

Mr. Skynner earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, as well as, a Master’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Manitoba.

John M. Taylor

Director, Global Product Marketing, AMD

Based in Austin, TX, John Taylor joined Advanced Micro Devices in April 2006, and today leads global product marketing for all AMD client, embedded, graphics and server products. In this role, he is responsible for the product and platform marketing strategy, positioning, messaging, and launch planning.

Previously, John led global corporate marketing for the introduction of the AMD Fusion family of Accelerated Processing Units (APU), which launched in Jan. 2011. In that role John drove industry ecosystem thought leadership, ensured market readiness, and served as a primary company evangelist for Fusion products. In his first three years with AMD, John led global communications and product reviews for the company’s complete line of AMD- and ATI-branded computing and graphics products.

John has nearly 20 years of experience in product and brand marketing and communications after beginning his career as an IT professional. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Washington State University.

Dr. Tzu Kun Ku

Director, Nanoelectronic Technology Division, Electronic & Optoelectronics Research Labs (EOL), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

Tzu Kun Ku received his Electronic Engineering Ph.D degree from National Chao-Tung University in 1996. He has been working in the semiconductor technology R&D for more than 14 years. He had 27 international papers published and 8 patents granted. After his graduation, he joined ITRI’s Electrical Research & Service Organization (ERSO) as an R&D engineer for deep submicron semiconductor process technology development (1996-2000). In this period, he developed the sub 0.13um backend technologies including both Al/low-k metallization and Cu/low-k dual damascene technology.

After 2000, he joined the Technology Development Division of Silicon Integrated System (SiS) company. During his three years at SiS, he led the integration team to successfully develop 0.15um high speed Logic, low power, RFCMOS & Mixed signal, 90nm logic device and advanced dual damascene Cu/low-k BEOL process integration technologies. From May 2003 to April 2010, he worked at a startup high end GPU products design house XGI (eXtreme Graphic Innovation) as an engineering director. He was responsible for three different departments including product engineering/testing, QA and system engineering. In April of 2010, he decided to return to ITRI in the Nanoelectronic technology division as the director of EOL. His current major interest and responsibility at EOL is to develop the “More than Morr” semiconductor technologies including emerging TSV based 3DIC technology, new non-volatile memory technology and next generation high power devices.

Dr. Mohamed Lachemi

Professor of Civil Engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Science, Ryerson University

Dr. Mohamed Lachemi is currently Professor of Civil Engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Science at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario. He graduated from the University of Science and Technology of Oran, Algeria, in 1986 and received his PhD in Structural Engineering from Sherbrooke University in 1993. He has more than 18 years of comprehensive professional engineering experience as an academic, a researcher and a practicing engineer in Quebec and Ontario.

Dr. Lachemi is an expert in the use of high-performance materials such as self-consolidation concrete and high-performance concrete in construction. He is well recognized for his pioneering work and significant research contributions toward reducing global environmental impacts of the construction industry through the development of high-performance materials and innovative construction technologies. His research has led to several industrial applications, over 100 peer-reviewed technical publications, and the training of dozens of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. He has also been involved in numerous collaborative industrial projects, including an international project leading to the construction of the world’s first reactive powder concrete structure.

Dr. Lachemi is currently an associate editor of the bilingual Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, and is an active member of several national and international technical committees. He has been a keynote speaker at several national and international conferences and workshops and was chair of the 2005 Canadian Society of Civil Engineering Conference Technical Program. His work has received several awards and recognitions, including a Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Construction. In June 2011, Dr. Lachemi was inducted as a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, one of the highest academic honours for Canadian engineers.