Farhad Tabrizi
President and Chief Executive Officer

Farhad Tabrizi was appointed president and chief executive officer of Grandis in January 2007, succeeding William Almon, Grandis co-founder, who remains a major shareholder. Tabrizi joined the company from Lexar Media, where he served as vice president of supply chain management and corporate development. Previously, he was vice president of worldwide marketing at Hynix Semiconductor, where he focused on developing, marketing and supporting Hynix's strategies for growing the corporation’s DRAM and flash businesses. Prior to joining Hynix, he held various management and design positions at leading semiconductor companies. Tabrizi brings to Grandis over 27 years experience in senior management, design, marketing, supply chain management, business development, strategic alliances, and industry standard committee chairmanship in the electronics industry. He received his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis.

Allen Morton
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance and Administration

Allen Morton has over 20 years of senior financial management experience in both venture-backed and public companies. Prior to joining Grandis, he served as CFO at Veraz Networks, a VOIP solutions company. Prior to Veraz, he was the CFO at Onetta, an optical amplifier company, where he led the successful sale to Bookham. He held senior financial management positions at IBM and Compaq Computers, in which he had Director Finance responsibility for divisions with sales in excess of $1 billion. He received his Master in Business Administration from the University of Santa Clara.

Mohamad Krounbi
Senior Vice President and General Manager of Research and Development

Mohamad Krounbi brings to Grandis over 25 years of experience in the magnetic storage industry. Prior to joining Grandis, he served as General Manager and Vice President of Engineering at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, where he was responsible for worldwide wafer manufacturing, product design and process development. He led the development and ramp of the first perpendicular magnetic recording head and Hitachi’s magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) read head that enabled the world’s first terabyte server product. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Wafer Operations and Process Development at Read-Rite Corporation and Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Western Digital. Earlier in his career, he spent 19 years at IBM where he was Director of Head Development and member of the team that developed the world’s first magneto-resistive (MR) recording head product. He holds over 40 patents in magnetic storage, head design and process technology and has received numerous awards throughout his career, including election to the IBM Academy of Technology in 1995 and the President's technology award from Hitachi for the development and launch of the first perpendicular magnetic recording product in 2006. He received his B.S. in Physics from Hagazian College in Beirut, Lebanon, and his M.S. in Physics from San Jose State University.

Alexander Driskill-Smith
Vice President of Business Development and Customer Programs

Alexander Driskill-Smith has more than ten years’ experience in business development, program management and advanced technology development in the magnetic recording and semiconductor industries and holds several patents. Prior to joining Grandis, he worked on nanofabrication and novel magnetic sensor designs at IBM Corporation and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, where he led the design, fabrication and integration of several new recording head designs. He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from the University of Cambridge, U.K., and expects to receive his M.B.A. degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. He currently serves on the San Francisco Advisory Board of Junior Achievement of Northern California.

Adrian Ong
Vice President of Memory Design and Chip Testing

Adrian Ong brings to Grandis over 20 years’ experience in the semiconductor industry with a proven track record in developing new designs from concept to high volume production. He holds over 50 U.S. and foreign patents. Prior to joining Grandis, he was co-founder and vice president of R&D at Inapac Technology, a system-in-package memory IP company specializing in true known-good-die DRAM for mobile, HDD, and networking applications. He was responsible for the design and development of products that resulted in over 100 million Inapac chips being shipped to end products such as the Motorola Razr, LG Prada, and Sony-Ericsson Cybershot. Prior to Inapac, he was Director of Technology at NeoMagic Corporation, where he was responsible for the development of embedded DRAMs, SoC memories, standard cell libraries, and custom circuits used in 2D/3D graphics and DSP applications. Previously, at Micron Technology, he worked on several generations of advanced DRAM memories that were taken to high volume production. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electronics Engineering from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from Singapore Polytechnic.

Eugene Chen
Grandis Fellow

Eugene Chen has over eighteen years’ experience in MRAM development. At Grandis, he is Principal Investigator of DARPA and NIST sponsored projects to develop STT-RAM memory technology. He holds 53 U.S. patents on MRAM, sensor, magnetic material, device and processing technologies, and has published 28 papers. Prior to joining Grandis, he worked on MRAM development at Cypress Semiconductor, Motorola, and NVE Corporation. At Cypress, he developed a 256 kbit MRAM chip on a pilot production line, and at NVE, he managed submicron MRAM programs and developed the first GMR sensor product. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Solid State Physics from the University of Minnesota.

Vladimir Nikitin
Vice President of Magnetic Cell Design, Modeling and Testing

Vladimir Nikitin brings to Grandis more than ten years’ experience in the magnetic recording industry. Prior to joining Grandis, he was a Senior Technical Staff Member and Manager of the Advanced Recording Group at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, where he was responsible for developing several new generations of thin-film magnetic recording heads. Previously, he was a Senior Engineer at IBM Corporation. During his career, he has authored more than 80 patents in the fields of magnetic recording, MRAM, MEMS and device processing. He holds a B.S. degree in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.