Moderated by Tara Akhavan, CEO, Faurecia IRYStec
Craig Bandes has been president & CEO of Pixelligent Technologies since 2009. As CEO, he has led Pixelligent through a successful plan of reorganization, raised nearly $100 million in capital, secured $15 million+ in US government grants, and established Pixelligent as the technology leader for high‐index materials for consumer electronics applications. Prior to Pixelligent, he was the president & CEO of Global Secure Corp, which grew from a start‐up to operations in four states, with 200+ employees, before it was acquired in 2007. Bandes has negotiated over $350 million in transactions and strategic partnerships in the US, Asia and Europe.
Amy Leong is senior VP, chief commercial officer at semiconductor test and measurement company FormFactor [NASDAQ: FORM], responsible for global customer sales and services, corporate marketing, and mergers and acquisitions. Over a course of nearly 20 years, she has held technical and business positions with FormFactor, including chief marketing officer and general manager. Prior to FormFactor, she worked at IBM, KLA, and Gartner in a variety of semiconductor process-engineering, metrology, product marketing, and market analyst roles. Leong currently serves as an independent board of director at Skywater Technology (NASDAQ: SKYT), the only US-investor owned pure-play semiconductor and technology foundry. She holds an MS in material science and engineering from Stanford University and a BS in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
As senior associate vice president of AUO Corporation’s Advanced Technology Research Center, Jennifer YC Lin directs the development of technology for the company’s future growth. Over the past 10 years, she has led her team to develop world-leading advanced display and non-display technologies, such as microLED display technology that has won numerous international awards, including a 2018 Best in Show Award at SID’s Display Week. Lin has spent more than 20 years in the display industry, working in areas including process integration, product design, product marketing, and strategic planning. She has an MS degree in physics from National Central University.
Tara Akhavan is a visionary award-winning technology entrepreneur and pioneer in the field of perceptual display processing for the consumer and automotive industry. She is the CEO of Faurecia IRYStec, Inc., (formerly known as IRYStec, Inc.), an innovation center that was acquired by Faurecia in April 2020. Tara founded IRYStec in 2015 and served as CTO for five years to introduce eye-friendly display technology to the automotive industry. She has a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, a master’s degree in artificial intelligence, and a Ph.D. in image processing and computer vision from Vienna University of Technology. Akhavan is the Canadian committee member for the International Committee for Illumination (CIE) and the marketing vice chair for the Society for Information Display. She was recognized as an Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019 by EoY Canada and as the founder of Top 20 Innovative Start-Ups in Canada in 2018 by CIX, Canada’s largest investor conference.