Section Title
Our Leadership Team
SynapSense Management
Peter Van Deventer, President & CEO
He is an established veteran of global technology market development. Pete spent a decade at Intel Corporation in a variety of sales, marketing and operational roles, including serving on the global Sales and Marketing, Flash Memories, and Mobile Product Group staffs. He was the Director of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for the global ramp of Centrino mobile technology and was involved in greater than 100 different technology ramps on either a regional or global level. Pete has over 18 years of international business experience. Prior to joining Intel, he founded and managed three companies. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University and holds an International MBA from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management.
Dr. Raju Pandey, SynapSense Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer
He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, at the University of California, Davis. While at UCD, Dr. Pandey led the SENSES project , which was funded in part under National Science Foundation grants. Dr. Pandey's research interests are in wireless sensor networks, distributed and parallel systems, system software, programming languages, security and software engineering. Dr. Pandey has authored over 40 papers on sensor networks and distributed computing and is a patent holder in this space. Dr. Pandey holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin, a M.S. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Bachelor in Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Rob Van Tuyle, Chief Financial Officer
Rob has over 20 years of experience in working with high technology companies. Prior to joining SynapSense, Rob was the Chief Financial Officer of Sierra Logic, a venture backed storage semiconductor company which was sold to Emulex Corporation (ELX) in October 2006. Prior to Sierra Logic, Rob was the Chief Financial Officer of ShareWave, a venture backed 802.11 wireless semiconductor company which was sold to Cirrus Logic (CRUS) in October 2001. Over his career, Rob has raised over $100 million in venture capital. Rob is a certified public accountant and a graduate from the University of Santa Clara.
Pat Weston, Vice President of Engineering
Pat is a 35 year industry veteran, having held multiple critical engineering positions in leading edge high technology companies. In his role as VP of Engineering at Watchguard Technologies, he oversaw large software development programs and selectively initiated and implemented the outsourcing of hardware and software development. While at Diamond Multimedia, he led the high energy development of the Rio MP3 Player products. During his 13 year tenure at Intel, he had a number of critical engineering roles, including Business Unit Manager responsible for conceiving, developing and delivering the world's first PCMCIA products. He holds issued patents in data communications and PCMCIA technology. Pat leads the SynapSense engineering and packaging effort. He is a graduate of the Witwatersrand Technical College in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Richard Alderman, Vice President of Sensor Engineering
Prior to joining SynapSensense, Richard spent 30 years with Honeywell in sensors and system design and most recently, as a Senior Design Fellow. Richard is a seasoned veteran of the instrumentation industry and brings a wealth of experience and knowledge. Richard sets the technical direction for sensors at SynapSense. Richard is the holder of 10 issued patents in the instrumentation field and has extensive experience with distributed sensors, as well as programmable logic control systems.
Mike Frieswyk, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing
Prior to joining SynapSense, Mike was the Sr. Vice President of Sales at Flextronics/Vista Point Technologies, and also spent almost 20 years with Intel where he was the vice president, Sales and Marketing Group and director of Global Accounts. Prior to that, he was co-general manager of Intel's Worldwide Customer Solutions Group. Frieswyk was director of Intel America's Business Development Organization for six years, during which time his team drove the overall enterprise solution sales strategy and engagements across North America and South America. He helped to develop Intel's overall solutions sales strategy and align the company toward a solution sales/influence model in the field. For the three years prior to that Frieswyk was the sales director for Dell. Frieswyk received a bachelor's degree in computer and information services from Arizona State University in 1983.
Ray Pfeifer, Vice President of Business Development
Prior to joining SynapSense, Pfeifer led the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Data Center initiatives, serving as chair of the Energy Efficient Data Center demonstration project, and as a research consultant for Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. He also previously served on the management teams of several successful technology startups. Most recently, he served as senior vice president of business development and marketing for Celerity Group Inc., the leading flow instrumentation and gas and chemical delivery supplier to the semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry. Ray has over twenty years of entrepreneurial experience in critical facilities design and energy efficiency, including ten years as founder, CEO and President of a process engineering consulting and software/systems integration company serving the semiconductor and biotech industries and leading university and government research laboratories.
Board of Directors
Mike Fister is President and Chief Executive Officer of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. Prior to joining Cadence, he spent 17 years at Intel Corporation, where he was most recently Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company's Enterprise Platforms Group. Fister is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati where he received a BS and MS in electrical engineering in 1977 and 1978 respectively. He spent his early years in a variety of executive and engineering management positions at Wyse, Machine Vision International, and Cincinnati Milacron. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of Autodesk Corporation and the Fabless Semiconductor Association, as well as two non-profit organizations, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Corley Phillips is Chairman of the Board, former Managing Partner and co-founder of American River Ventures with over two decades of extensive experience in developing businesses, building sales organizations, developing marketing strategies, and creating partner programs. Prior to American River Ventures, Corley was an active seed-stage investor in 28 companies. He learned the art of entrepreneurship through a distinguished career that included serving as President and CEO of Manzanita Software Systems, an accounting software company that merged with The Sage Group (LSE: SGE) in 1994, and as President and Co-founder of Grafpoint, a communications software company that subsequently merged with White Pine Software (NASDAQ: WPNE).
Scott MacDonald is a Partner with Emerald Technology Ventures, a global leader in cleantech venture capital. Founded in 2000 under the name SAM Private Equity, Emerald is a pioneer in this rapidly emerging sector and is focused on innovative technologies in energy, materials and water. From offices in Zurich, Switzerland and Montreal, Canada, Emerald manages three venture capital funds and two venture capital portfolio mandates totaling over US$380 million. Scott has been active in the venture capital industry for the past 10 years and has focused exclusively on the global cleantech sector for the past 5 years. Scott graduated with a Bachelors degree from McMaster University and an MBA from Dalhousie University. He previously served as Chairman of RuggedCom (TSX:RCM) and is currently a Director of Solicore and SoftSwitching Technologies. He is a member of the North American Advisory Board for the CleanTech Venture Network, an industry association that brings together all stakeholders in the area of cleantech, a volunteer director of Gymnastics Canada and is an elected voting member of the Canadian Olympic Committee for the 2005-2009 quadrennial.
Rodrigo Prudencio is a Partner with Nth Power Venture Capital. Rodrigo works with the portfolio companies and Limited Partners to lead strategic relationships that advance early adoption of energy technologies and services. The strategic relations program he leads is responsible for over $100 million of contracts and investments between Nth Power’s Limited Partners and portfolio companies.
Dr. Raju Pandey, SynapSense Chief Technology Officer, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis. While at UCD, Dr. Pandey led the SENSES project , which was funded in part under National Science Foundation grants. Dr. Pandey has authored over 40 papers on sensor networks and distributed computing and is a patent holder in this space. Dr. Pandey holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin, MS from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Bachelor in Technology from the Indian Insitute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Peter Van Deventer, SynapSense President & CEO, is an established veteran of global technology market development, with over 18 years of international business experience. Pete spent a decade at Intel Corporation in a variety of sales, marketing and operational roles, including serving on the global Sales and Marketing, Flash Memories, and Mobile Products Group staffs. He was the Director of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for the global ramp of Centrino mobile technology and was involved in greater than 100 different technology ramps. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University and holds an International MBA from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management.
Board Observers
Michael Goguen focuses on cleantech, semiconductor and systems investments. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1996, Michael spent 10 years in various engineering, research, and product management roles at DEC, SynOptics and Centillion, and was a director of Engineering at Bay Networks (NT). Michael was also a Technical Chairman of the ATM Forum. Michael has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
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Jim Schraith is a Venture Partner of DFJ Frontier. He is an active angel investor in the Sacramento area and sits on the boards of several area early stage companies. Mr. Schraith's career in high technology spans 25 years and includes significant public and private company experience with operating roles of CEO, COO and EVP at Quantum, ShareWave, Compaq and AST Research. As the leader of Compaq's North American operations, he was responsible for over $10 billion in annual revenues and a team of over 6,000 people. At AST, Mr. Schraith was President & COO and a member of the team that took AST to the Fortune 500 list in 1992. He sits on the boards of Achievo, Semtech, and VisualCalc. Mr. Schraith co-founded QTV Capital, a Bay area venture capital fund, in early 2000. A cancer survivor, Mr. Schraith is an active fundraiser for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.