Scalable High-Speed Digital Test Technology

Paul Sakamoto — President and Chief Executive Officer

Paul Sakamoto has over 30 years of experience in the semiconductor and semiconductor equipment industry. Prior to DFT Microsystems, Paul was the CEO of Inovys Corporation, Pleasanton, California. Inovys was a maker of semiconductor test software and hardware that uses advanced electrical defect isolation methodology to locate faults in the most advanced silicon chips. Inovys was successfully merged with Verigy Inc. (NASDAQ: VRGY) at the end of 2007.  Prior to Inovys, Paul was Vice President, General Manager of the Memory Products Division (“MPD”) at Credence Systems Corporation. Under his management, MPD grew from zero to over $70M in annual revenues. While at Credence, he has also held posts as VP of N. American Sales and VP of Customer Marketing and created a number of “Design to Test” partnerships with customers and software developers. This resulted in cutting semiconductor product introduction times at these customers by up to 3 months per new design, to the mutual benefit of both these select customers and Credence. Prior to joining Credence, Mr. Sakamoto held various sales and engineering positions including Vice President of Sales at MCT (Micro Component Technology), Director of Sales at Megatest Corporation and six years of test and product engineering at Intel Corporation, finishing as a Product Engineering Manager. Paul received his BSEE/CE from Oregon State University in 1977 and is a native of Portland, Oregon.

 

Mohamed Hafed — Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Hafed is a cofounder of DFT Microsystems and serves as its Chief Technology Officer. During the company’s early commercialization phases, Dr. Hafed was instrumental to the creation, design, and marketing of the company’s technology and products. He is the inventor of many of the innovations in the company’s products. In his current role, Dr. Hafed is responsible for product definition and market alignment, and he maintains close relationships with key customers and partners.

Dr. Hafed is a recognized industry expert in the area of test and has served on several IEEE committees. He has received several national and international awards for his contributions to mixed-signal test technology, including "Best Paper" awards from both the IEEE International Test Conference and Micronet . In 2004, Dr. Hafed received the prestigious "Young Innovator" award from the Government of Canada for his outstanding research and contributions to knowledge transfer.

Dr. Hafed received his B.Eng., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from McGill University.

 

Chris Patrick — Vice-President of Sales

Chris has over 20 years of sales and management experience in the Technology industry primarily in the semiconductor sector. His experience includes 6 years with chip maker / digital video pioneer C-Cube Microsystems where he ultimately became responsible for co-managing the North America sales/support organization. Upon C-Cube's acquisition by LSI Logic in 2001, he was named sales manager for LSI Logic Canada.. He left LSI Logic in 2002 to start his own technical sales consulting company - Socketeer Tech Sales.

Prior to his experience with C-Cube, Chris was account manager for AIM Electronics. AIM was a distributor of Test equipment specializing in: Logic Analyzers; Signal Generators; Device programmers and EDA tools

Chris graduated from Algonquin College (Ottawa) Electronics Engineering Technician program in 1986.

 

Andre Lafontaine — Chief Financial Officer

Andre has been involved in financing and managing technology companies for the past 15 years. He has been CFO of Algolith Inc. and Goal Semiconductor Inc. (acquired by Ramtron International in 2005). From 1999 to 2001 he held the position of Director at the Société Générale de Financement (SGF) where he led 70M$ in investments rounds in high technology companies. Andre started his career at Price Waterhouse, first as an auditor and then as a Director of the Financial Advisory Services. He holds a Bachelor in Accounting Science from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, is a member of the Quebec 0rdre of Chartered Accountant (CA) and a member of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators (CBV).