 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Russell Stern | Scott Hughes | Dean Barnat | Russ Krapf | Bradley Masters | Steve Pope
Martin Porter | Derek Roberts | Danny Shamlou | Bruce Tolley | George Zimmerman
Solarflare Communications is managed by an experienced team with a successful record of delivering physical layer and data networking products into complex markets and solving difficult communications problems.
President and Chief Executive Officer
Russell Stern has served as President and CEO at Solarflare Communications since 2004. He was formerly President and CEO at JNI Corporation in San Diego, California. Prior to JNI, Mr. Stern served as General Manager and COO at Quantum Corporation.
For more than 13 years, he held a number of increasingly responsible positions in the disc drive industry including five years at Western Digital Corporation in Irvine, CA, where he held the positions of Sr. VP, R and D, VP, Worldwide Operations and as Co-Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Stern has also held executive engineering and marketing positions with Seagate Technology and Adaptec.
He began his career at IBM, where he held various engineering and management positions in the development and manufacturing of the IBM PC / XT / AT and PS/2. He obtained his Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. Mr. Stern is also a Foundation Board member of the Orange County High School of the Arts, a chartered public school in Santa Ana, CA.
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Finance and Administration
Scott Hughes is responsible for all financial, human resources, legal and IT functions at Solarflare. He was formerly VP, Worldwide Services at Quantum Corporation, a leading supplier of tape drives and storage automation systems. Prior to Quantum, he spent over 10 years at disc drive maker Western Digital Corporation, where he held several senior management positions including VP, Human Resources, VP, Sales Operations, and VP, E-Business. Scott started his career with Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm specializing in compensation, benefits and human resource management. He holds a BA and MA in Economics from Stanford University.
Vice President, Operations
Dean Barnat is responsible for Solarflare’s world-wide supply chain manufacturing operations including foundry, assembly, test and logistics. Dean has over 20 years of industry experience encompassing IC test development, product engineering and manufacturing operations.
Previously, he was VP of Operations for RF Magic, a successful RFIC company acquired in June 2007 by Entropic Communications. Dean also worked for Peregrine Semiconductor, Brooktree, and Unisys Corporation and contributed to or led development and deployment of numerous digital, mixed signal and RFIC test solutions supporting characterization, qualification and production for these companies. Dean’s background also includes enterprise yield management.
He ran professional services for Syntricity Inc. makers of yield analysis software for the semiconductor industry. Dean holds a BSEE degree from San Diego State University.
Vice President of Sales and Business Development
Russ Krapf is responsible for all worldwide sales and business development efforts which includes strengthening customer relationships and OEM partnerships. Russ was formerly with ARIO Data Networks where he was CEO and introduced innovative storage networking solutions. Prior to that, Russ was VP of Business Development in the Fibre Channel connectivity business at JNI Corp in San Diego, where he was responsible for all Business Development strategy and ultimately for the sale of the company to AMCC. Russ was VP of Business Development at Western Digital Corporation and he has held a number of other CEO and senior executive positions in the past with companies such as Keen Personal Media, Western Digital, Censtor and Seagate. Russ holds a BS in Engineering Science from Florida State University and an MBA from Boston University.
Vice President, Engineering
Bradley Masters is VP of Engineering at Solarflare Communications and is responsible for all Solarflare’s engineering and development efforts. Previously, he was VP of Engineering for JNI Corporation, where he was responsible for the development of Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters and associated software drivers. Prior to JNI, Brad spent 17 years at Western Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: WDC), where he was VP of A/V Product Development and served in various hardware, firmware, software, and VLSI engineering management positions until co-founding and taking on the role of Senior VP of Engineering and Operations for Keen Personal Media, which developed Personal Video Recording hardware and software. He holds a BSEE from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer
Steve Pope is the CTO for controllers at Solarflare. Previously he co-founded Level 5 Networks and prior to that was a post-doctorate researcher in the field of high-speed networks and operating systems at Olivetti Research Labs, which later became AT&T Laboratories Cambridge. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.
Vice President, Software Development
Prior to Porter's positions with Solarflare, he served as software director for three years at Level 5 Networks, which merged with Solarflare in 2006. Porter spent the five previous years in the same role at Conexant where he oversaw the protocol stack development group for ADSL silicon. He holds a first class degree in mathematics from Nottingham University and a master's with distinction from York University.
Co-Founder and Vice President, Hardware Architecture
Derek Roberts is responsible for the controller hardware architecture at Solarflare. He co-founded Level 5 Networks in July 2002. Prior to this, Dr. Roberts was the hardware architect for the CLAN high-performance networking project at AT&T Laboratories Cambridge. While at AT&T Labs, he was also responsible for numerous leading-edge hardware developments. Previously, Dr. Roberts headed up application software development at Myriad Solutions. He holds a first class degree in Electrical Sciences and a PhD in Voltage Standards from the University of Cambridge.
Vice President, VLSI Design
Shamlou joins Solarflare with over 15 years of senior level engineering management experience. Prior positions include general management and engineering vice president roles at Mindspeed and Conexant where he was responsible for timely execution and production release of several mixed signal Systems-on-Chip (SoC) products. Most recently, Shamlou worked for Starport Systems as vice president of engineering where he led the development of ultra high-frequency radio frequency identification SoC and a 65nm XFI SERDES IP core. He has a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee and a master's degree from Georgia Tech.
Vice President, Marketing
Bruce Tolley is responsible for all marketing activities at Solarflare Communications. Prior to joining Solarflare, Bruce was a Senior Product Line Manager at Cisco Systems where he managed the Ethernet transceiver business. While at Cisco he managed product life cycles and launched Metro Ethernet, 10 Gigabit, and 1000BASE-T switch solutions. Formerly Study Group Chair of the IEEE 802.3aq 10GBASE-LRM standards project, Bruce is a frequent contributor to the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards projects and served as an officer of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance. Prior to Cisco, he served in various marketing management roles at 3Com Corporation, where among other accomplishments, he launched 3Com’s first Gigabit Ethernet products. Bruce holds a BA from UC Santa Cruz, an MA from Stanford University, MBA from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley and a PhD from Stanford University.
Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer
George Zimmerman is the CTO for the physical layer (PHY) line of business and founder of Solarflare Communications. He is an acknowledged expert in wireline communications and has been a defining force in the development of 10GBASE-T as well as various DSL technologies. His technical interests focus on communications and signal processing near the fundamental limits, particularly where there are man-made noise sources to be mitigated. As CTO, George is responsible for Solarflare's core physical layer technology development and technical direction of its PHY products. He led the initial formation of the IEEE 10GBASE-T Study Group, with a tutorial on the subject in November 2002, and was a significant contributor throughout the 802.3an standards process. Prior to founding Solarflare, Dr. Zimmerman was with PairGain Technologies, as Chief Scientist and VP of Strategic Planning. He drove basic technology development and standardization for DSL, as well as new market and business development strategy, including mergers and acquisitions. Before PairGain, George was with Caltech and NASA/JPL where he was responsible for signal processing R and D for NASA’s Deep Space Network. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, and an undergraduate degree from Stanford University.