Bruce McWilliams

Bruce McWilliams (born June 19, 1956) is an American business executive and serial entrepreneur specializing in technology. He has co-founded and managed multiple companies in the field of semiconductor, packaging and display. McWilliams is currently the Executive Chairman of Intermolecular, Inc., a trusted partner in Advanced Materials Innovation. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company. He has a long history of serving on Board of Directors and he currently is a director at Inphi and NovaTorque.

Early life and education

Bruce McWilliams was born on June 19, 1956 in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in St-Louis, Missouri.

McWilliams became interested in physics at an early age^[1] Playing with electronic kits and taking electronic equipment apart, he built circuits and discovered the transistor. He wanted to understand how it was working. Later in high-school he studied The Feynman Lectures on Physics and knew that Physics was his passion. As a teenager, McWilliams was inspired to submit the solution to a complex math problem to a professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was quickly admitted with a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon, where he finished his undergraduate and doctoral studies in physics in just seven years. McWilliams obtained a B.S.(1978), M.S (1978) and Ph.D. (1981) degrees in physics from Carnegie Mellon University.^[2]

Career

Mellon Institute

McWilliams started his career as a Senior Fellow at the Mellon Institute where he worked on Solid State Sensors and Infrared Systems

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNLL)

McWilliams led early research and development efforts at LLNL for space-based missile defense intercept technology (“Brilliant Pebbles” program). He led the development of critical technologies for integrated circuit manufacturing, electronic system integration, wide-field target tracking systems, and radiation hardening technologies for electronics. While working at LLNL on the “Brilliant Pebbles” space-based missile defense program, McWilliams led a team focused on the laser processing of semiconductors, optical systems for target tracking and electronics packaging, including packaging to minia¬turize electronic systems – a key enabler of the electronics revolution.

nChip

McWilliams left Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory( LNLL) to co-founded nCHIP, a company developing semiconductor packaging solutions based on a technology licensed from LLNL. nCHIP received funding from major investors including Kleiner Perkins, Mohr Davidow, and Mayfield. The technology was used by Sun Microsystems for the Spark Station II. nCHIP was acquired by Flextronics International in 1995.

Flextronics International

As Senior Vice President McWilliams led product engineering and prototype production at sites in San Jose, Boston and Singapore. He was the lead technical officer for the acquisitions strategy.

S-Vision

Following his yearning for entrepreneurship, McWilliams left Flextronics and S-Vision, a silicon integrated circuit-based display company in 1996. The company developed a liquid crystal-on-silicon based reflective display technology for video projectors and high resolution monitors. In 1999, the operations were sold to companies in the display and related manufacturing segments.

Tessera

McWilliams was President and CEO of Tessera Technologies from 1999 to 2008 and Chairman and CSO until 2009 . McWilliams was recruited by Tessera to turn around the chip packaging business into a profitable and growing company. McWilliams changed the strategic direction away from manufacturing and built a successful licensing business model focused on the mobile phone and semiconductor memory market. Tessera has licensed its chip packaging technology to numerous semiconductor manufacturers, including Intel and Samsung Electronics. McWilliams took Tessera public in 2003.^[3] During McWiliams’ tenure, Tessera experienced remarkable compounded revenue and operating profit growth which led to Tessera being cited by Business Week as the Second Hottest Growing Company in America in 2006 and the 20th Hottest Growing Company in 2007. In 2006, Electronic Business cited Tessera as the 4th Best Small Electronics Company in the US.

USVP

McWilliams joined U.S. Venture Partners, a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm as executive-in-residence.^[4]

SuVolta

McWilliams was President and CEO of Suvolta from 2009 to 2014. SuVolta was a start-up backed by Silicon Valley venture capital firms including KPCB, August Capital, DAG Ventures and NEA. Formerly DSMSolutions, the company had the vision to develop a new transistor technology to enable low power devices. As CEO, McWilliams changed the strategy from a solution based on JFet technology to a more commonly used CMOS solution.^[5] The technology was licensed to Fujitsu Semiconductor for their 55 nm process and used in MB86S22AA Milbeaut image processor IC.^[6]

Intermolecular

McWilliams is currently the Executive Chairman of Intermolecular, Inc., a trusted partner is Advanced Materials Innovation. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company. He has served on the Intermolecular board since 2005 and as the chairman of the Board of Directors since June 2014. With its substantial materials expertise, accelerated learning and experimentation platform, and information and analytics infrastructure, Intermolecular has a ten-year track record helping leading companies accelerate and de-risk materials innovation. Under McWilliams’s leadership, Intermolecular changed its business model and introduced IMI Labs,^[7] a wide range of bundled services with varying levels of materials processing, characterization, and analysis. Service levels can be tailored to the unique needs of each customer – from quick materials deposition and characterization — to fully customized development programs.

Personal life and interests

McWilliams is married. He enjoys keeping up with latest developments in cosmology.

Philanthropy

McWilliams currently serves as a life trustee of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Mellon University. The McWilliams Fellowship was established in 2007 by alumnus Bruce McWilliams to support The Mellon College of Science graduate students conducting leading-edge research in fields such as nanotechnology, biophysics and cosmology where Carnegie Mellon's advantages can lead to high impact. In 2008 McWillams established the McWilliams center for cosmology at Carnegie Mellon University. The Center supports the multidisciplinary quest of faculty and students to understand the makeup of the universe and how it evolved to its current state. In 2011, in partnership with fellow alumnus Alexander Knaster, McWillams helped to establish the Knaster-McWilliams scholarships, which allow for increased access to faculty and early research opportunities in addition to tuition assistance.

Recognition and Awards

Cited by Science Digest in 1984 as “One of America’s 100 Brightest Scientist under the age of 40”

Received the 2005 Ernst & Young’s Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year® award.^[8]

He has been nominated to the Lawrence Livermore Hall Entrepreneurs' Hall of Fame for his contribution to developing semiconductor packaging technology and founding and leading multiple technologies companies ( Note:nCHIP and S-Vision, and for leadership at Tessera Technologies and Suvolta.^[9]

References

External links

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