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Engineering roots
Whereas most (young) people nowadays take technology for granted, I grew up in the sixties and seventies, when technology developments were spectacular. Born barely a year after the first Spoetnik 1 satellite, witnessing the Apollo moon landings on TV, going to Schiphol airport with my parents to see (and hear the screaming sound) of the first DC-8 jet airliners, repairing salvaged radios and television sets in my room, for me it has always been clear: I wanted a life in technology. In the end I kept aerospace as a hobby and, warmly supported by my father, went for electronics at the Technische Hogeschool (now Technical University) in Delft.
One of the things that intrigued my mightily as a kid and has biased me towards electronic engineering was the home-built TV of my father, dating back to 1948. Read more about this here: |
RF
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From the very start of my electronics study it became clear that RF and Communication technology was where my heart was. And has always remained since then. So I did my Masters in the group Microwave and Remote Sensing, working on phased array radar calibration, followed by my military service as a radar technology teaching officer at the LETS (Luchtmacht Electronische and Technische School) of the Royal Netherlands Air Force in (then) Schaarsbergen.
In 1985 I started at Philips, at that time still a mighty electronics company, active in almost every segment of the electronics industry and employing 350.000 employees. I joined the Philips Research Laboratories (the famous Natuurkundig Laboratorium or NatLab), working on the electronics for coherent optical transmission systems in the group of Teun Swanenburg. With the great team we had there we built 140Mb/s, 1 and 2.5Gbit/s systems, which was then on the leading edge of technology. I closed this period with a PhD under prof. Jens Arnbak at my alma mater in Delft, which to my surprise turned out to be a cum laude. Next followed one of the happiest periods from my career: engineering manager at the Business Unit Tuners of Philips Consumer Electronics, first in Krefeld (Germany) and then Singapore. Although television tin can tuners was the core business of this unit, we essentially developed and produced all RF-modules for all Philips products (with the exception of car radio tuners). More interestingly, my R&D labs were next door to the factory, so manufacturing and quality issues were always around the corner. I loved going into the fab for my daily tour, both in Krefeld and Singapore, and it was impressive to see the mass manufacturing fab in Batam (Indonesia). Here I've learned the importance of robust design and quality the hard way: nothing as instructive as living through a serious quality issue! And nothing as useful as working abroad in different cultures. Working in Krefeld and Singapore in very competent and motivated teams was a great learning experience as an emerging R&D manager, while the different cultures were an eye opener and much more learning. |
Semiconductors
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Although I had designed a few IC's during my Research period, with respect to semiconductors I had so far been on the application side only. But after two years in Singapore I was asked to take over the RF Transceiver Research Group at the Natlab, moving to the design side of IC's. In this group we covered all RF and broadband applications for the Philips product divisions; of course the biggest customer was Philips Semiconductors, but Consumer Electronics (Tuners, Set Top Boxes) and Philips Optical Storage (DVD front ends) were others. Again this was a group that covered a very broad range of applications; the world's first silicon integrated TV tuner, 12.5Gbit/s optical cross-connect switches, integrated DVD photo detector+preamps, and the first mobile MIMO experiments, to mention a few. As a group we were also in the midst of the heated debates about bipolar vs. RF-CMOS for RF-IC's.
In 2003 this initially debate-only had escalated in a mild chaos within the Semiconductors division, with four parallel Bluetooth developments in four different technologies. I was asked by the Philips CTO, Ad Huijser, to present my analysis to the Semiconductors management, and two weeks later I found myself transferred there, having been nominated Vice President and RF Program Manager for Mario Rivas, the charismatic head of all communications business. Working for Mario was great, a fantastic boss to work for, but in hindsight it was fairly naive to think I would be able to solve the politically entrenched RF technology positions of the different business units. But a great time to learn! Part of the job was to head the RF Innovation Centres, 40 people each in Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and Caen (France). These teams worked on new technologies like LDMOS, GaAs mobile PA's, RF-MEMS, BAW-filters, PICS passive integration technology and of course RFCMOS. Against the RCMOS-storm I was able, however, to push through the technology development of what turned out the best SiGe BiCMOS we would create, millimetre wave Qubic4X. And in 2007 we acquired the SiLabs (Austin, Texas) mobile business after an interesting due diligence process. In the meantime, we had smoothly exited Philips, becoming private equity-held NXP Semiconductors in 2006. An interesting time lay ahead. |
Analogue & everything else
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Up to this moment in my career, 2007, I had almost exclusively been involved with RF and broadband technologies, of course much to my pleasure. However, I was then asked to participate in the new Competency Management structure that was being rolled out across the company under the CTO René Penning de Vries. The idea was to have an independent competency and technology-centric structure across all businesses to align and coordinate technology needs and technical competence build-up and information exchange. In this structure I lead the RF and Analogue section, covering a large and diverse part of the organisation. It was then that I dived into for me new segments like audio, power, discretes, logic and interfaces, quickly finding out that each of these segments was as interesting as RF, with their own technology requirements, broad portfolios and innovation. Plenty of very stimulating roadmap review sessions to be held!
In the end I did this only for one year, because I was then asked to become the Business Unit R&D and Strategy manager (the BU CTO or BUTO as we called it) of Multi Market Semiconductors. This was early 2008, and on the day I started there it was announced that my previous unit Mobile Communications was sold to ST Microelectronics. Half a year later the Consumer TV business was sold and our BU, then appropriately called High Performance Mixed Signal ended up being the largest in NXP. Again I entered new fields: microcontrollers, mobile speakers, 65 and 40nm SOC's and security camera processors to mention a few. This BU also collected the remaining Emerging Business of NXP, covering the portable medical, mobile audio (the Maximus project!) and NXP Software businesses. Next to these we defined Sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) as our focus areas, doing acquisitions in the Zigbee and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) domains. After some split-ups and re-mergers between the BU's it had become the 2.5Bio$ Communications and Security organisation with 1600 engineers and a 430Mio$ R&D budget. Time for a less stressful life! |
Maximus-R&D
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Since March 2015 Maximus R&D B.V. is my consultancy company, specifically for Technology and R&D Strategy. Here I essentially continue what I did the last ten years, what I love to do and which I think I'm good at: helping businesses to optimize their technology roadmap, make the right (technology-related) strategic choices, identify opportunities for differentiating innovation, and optimize the R&D organisation and processes.
For the past seven years I have been supporting quite number of companies, mostly active in or around teh world of semiconductors, and always involving either technology strategy or R&D processes: MAcom (Mas., US on SiGe RF strategy), Neways Microelectronics (Sittard, NL, on thick film technology innovation), Ampleon (Nijmegen, NL, on InP technology). For six years I have been active for Austria Micro Systems (ams, Unterpremstätten, Austria), mainly on streamlining R&D processes, but also as interim Division Engineering Manager, and recently involved in the ams-Osram post-merger integration for R&D. Next to that I have been supervisory board member for a number of years with Effect Photonics (Eindhoven, NL, InP integrated optical devices) and Mapper Lithogrpahy (Delft, NL), the latter as chairman of the board. Since October 2019 I'm part of the team that has founded the start-up SandGrain B.V. (Delft, NL), that develops a unique authentication Trust Platform for the IIoT. As CTO I am responsible for technology strategy and IC development. Interesting but challenging! |
