Executives
Joseph Laia
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Laia comes to Miasolé from KLA-Tencor where he was Group Vice President of Metrology responsible for all of KLA's 8 wafer metrology businesses. Previously at KLA-Tencor he served as the Group Vice President of the Process Equipment division and as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Blue 29, a joint venture between KLA-Tencor and Dainippon Screen. Prior to joining KLA, Dr. Laia was at Novellus Systems, Inc. for 7 years where he held a number of leadership positions including Vice Present and General manager of the Physical Vapor Deposition Division, and Vice President and General Manager of the Dielectric High Density Plasma Division. Dr. Laia additionally spent eleven years in technical and program leadership roles at Los Alamos National Laboratories, including Program Director of the Energy/Civilian Business Sector, Group Leader of Coating and Polymers, and Section Leader of the Chemical Vapor Deposition Section. Dr. Laia holds a Ph. D. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, as well as a B.S. in Chemistry from S.U.N.Y. Stonybrook.
Merle McClendon
Chief Financial Officer
Ms. McClendon joined Miasolé as its Chief Financial Office in November 2006. She brings to the company extensive experience as a public company CFO with expertise in the many aspects of financial management and administration important to Miasolé's next growth stage. Ms. McClendon has over 20 years experience in finance, with 10 years in CFO roles for public and private fabless semiconductor companies including Mellanox Technologies Ltd., Transmeta Corp. and NeoMagic. She has directed finance, legal, human resources and information technology organizations for companies which have grown from privately held startups to multi-national, public companies and has successfully completed financial equity and debt transactions, mergers and acquisitions, IP licensing and divestitures. Ms. McClendon received her Bachelors Degree in Business Administration from San Jose State University. She is a certified public accountant and began her career as an audit manager with Deloitte and Touche.
Stephen Barry
Vice President of Operations
Mr. Barry brings over thirty years of manufacturing and operations experience to Miasolé. Beginning with Memorex Media Group, Stephen participated in the transformation of data storage from 8-inch floppy disks to Winchester drives. At Read-Rite Corporation as Director, Manufacturing and then at Akashic Memories Corporation as Vice President, Manufacturing Operations, Stephen was responsible for developing and integrating thin film technologies essential to the dramatic growth of the disk drive in data storage. Throughout this period of expansion Mr. Barry lead the search for low-cost manufacturing solutions through technological innovation, process automation and efficiency improvements as well as contract and offshore manufacturing. As President and CEO of Perisale Corporation and later as owner of MESA Consulting, Mr. Barry was directly responsible for the planning, start-up and ramp-up of high volume manufacturing plants throughout the world.
Paul Shufflebotham
Vice President of Engineering
Dr. Paul Shufflebotham is Miasolé's Vice President of Engineering for the Front End of the Line (vacuum deposition systems). Dr. Shufflebotham has over 17 years of management experience in the semiconductor capital equipment industry. He most recently served as Vice President of Metrology Engineering at KLA-Tencor Corporation, where he managed a global engineering organization responsible for a half dozen major product lines. Prior to KLA-Tencor, Dr. Shufflebotham served in several senior engineering management roles at Novellus Systems Inc., including General Manager of the Aluminum PVD business, Director of Product Development for the PVD Division and Director of Product Development for the High Density Plasma CVD Division. Prior to this Dr. Shufflebotham held various engineering and management roles at Novellus Systems and Lam Research Corporation. Dr. Shufflebotham holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Dr. Shufflebotham holds 12 patents and 22 publications in areas related to plasma deposition process and equipment development.
Atiye Bayman
Vice President of Process Technology
Atiye Bayman has 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Prior to joining Miasolé, she was with Novellus Systems Inc. for 8 years. At Novellus, as Director of Technology for the high density plasma products business unit, she was responsible for process development for dielectric deposition for gap fill applications. She developed expertise in device performance optimization and process integration at Synergy Semiconductor Inc., a small semiconductor device company specialized in fast memory and application specific chips. During her 11 years at Synergy, she held positions in yield management and technology development. She started her career in the industry at Advanced Micro Devices, where she developed plasma etch processes for AMD’s first trench isolated bipolar technology. Dr. Bayman holds a Ph.D in solid state physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Bachelor of Science in physics from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.
Jason Corneille
Vice President of Product Technology
Dr. Jason Corneille joined Miasolé in October 2007 to lead the company’s back-end assembly processes and engineering. Dr. Corneille brings 12 years of innovation and accomplishments in semiconductor equipment process and integration and development. Prior to Miasolé, Dr. Corneille was Sr. Director of KLA-Tencor’s Metrology Divisions Group Marketing, where he lead strategic coordination between KLA-Tencor’s five metrology divisions and was responsible for developing strategies and growth for new markets and applications. Before KLA-Tencor, Dr. Corneille worked at Blue-29 as Sr. Director of Strategic Technology and Sr. Director of Operations. He has also held product management, account technology management, and process development management positions at Novellus Systems, Inc. Dr. Corneille received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Southeastern Louisiana University and his Ph. D. in Analytical Chemistry (Surface Science) from Texas A&M University.
Kannan Ramanathan
Chief Research Officer
Dr. Ramanathan has over 20 years of experience in developing solar thin film materials, and is currently responsible for R&D in next-generation thin film solar cells and processes. Kannan Ramanathan received his Ph.D. degree in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras for the “Optical and Electrical Properties of AgInSe2 Single Crystals and Thin Films”. He started his work in the field of solar at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now NREL) in 1985 as a post doctoral fellow. He continued this work at Ametek Applied Materials where pioneering work was done with electrodeposited CdTe solar cells and n-i-p structures. When he returned to NREL as a Senior Scientist, he was able to initiate a CdTe Close Space Sublimation (CSS) project. In 1994, he returned to the CIGS team at NREL and began working on junction science where he was able to demonstrate the potential of n-type doping in junction formation. This led to the successful development of Zn-doped, buffer layer free CIGS cells. Kannan led an effort in repeatable fabrication of high efficiency CIGS cells. This led to surpassing the record established in 1998 and created a new world record efficiency of 19.3%.