About Us

Management

Dr S Karl Heeks

CEO and co-founder

Karl has spent around 20 years in senior technical and commercial roles within blue chip organisations, SMEs and start-ups. He is experienced in technology development and commercialisation including licensing and general management in high technology in Europe, USA and Asia. Previously he was Director of Business Development at Cambridge Display Technology Ltd where he was part of a small team which won many prestigious awards including the highest ranking UK Company in the Delloite and Touché Fast 500 in 2002. Karl’s commercial expertise is complemented by a strong engineering background. He is an inventor on over 30 granted and pending patents worldwide and has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering's Gold MacRobert Award for 'outstanding innovation in engineering'. He has BSc and PhD degrees in Chemistry and Chemical Physics.

 

Dr Andrew Fisher

CTO

As CTO Andy plays a key role in the architectural design and implementation of UltraSoC’s innovative debugging capability as well as providing strategy and technical support to the marketing capability. Andy has a depth of technical experience ranging from high level software authoring through to low level hardware and ASIC design. Previously Andy was CTO and co-founder of DisplayLink, growing the company from 3 people in a shed to over 100 staff on 4 continents and leading the ASIC architectures for 3 generations of products. He has also held senior technical positions at Philips and AT & T Laboratories. Andy has a BEng and a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Sheffield.

 

Professor Klaus D McDonald-Maier

Chief Scientist and co-founder

Klaus leads the technical development program at UltraSoC. He is internationally recognised as an expert in embedded systems and Systems-on Chip technology. He is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex and has held academic positions at the University of Kent and the University of Jena. Previously at Infineon Technologies AG he was responsible for the architecture specification of advanced SoC processor cores, and modules. Klaus McDonald-Maier has authored over 150 papers and holds 12 patents granted and pending worldwide. He is a Fellow of the IET and a senior member of IEEE.

　

Mr David Rose

VP Business Development & Strategic Relationships

Dave leads the business development and strategic partnership activities at UltraSoC. He has over 15 years experience selling to semiconductor companies and their OEMs that manufacture today’s high tech consumer products in Asia, US and Europe. He was formally at ARM Ltd for over ten years in various director-level roles in business development, marketing and sales.

　

Dr Andrew Hopkins

VP Engineering and co-founder

Andrew leads the development of UltraDebug™ and an associated technical marketing package. He is experienced in all aspects of computer architecture including SoC design, system level development support and embedded systems engineering. He has managed large multi-institution engineering programs with elite international partners. He has 4 patents pending, numerous technical publications and has served as a referee for several IEEE, IET and Elsevier journals. Andrew obtained a top first in Computer System Engineering from the University of Kent in 2003 where he also took the IEE (IET) prize for the highest placed BEng.

　

Board

Mr Matthew Trowbridge

Non-Executive Chairman

Matthew has held senior management and board positions at several of the biggest semiconductor companies in the world. He spent 20 years at Hitachi Europe, latterly as Executive General Manager where he was also Chairman of SuperH, Inc the joint venture between Hitachi and STMicroelectronics. In 2003 he led the merger of Hitachi Semiconductor with Mitsubishi Semiconductor in Europe to form Renesas Technology Europe and led the Company as its CEO and then as Chairman until 2010. Matthew holds a degree in Engineering from St John’s College, Cambridge as well as a MSc in Control Engineering.

 

Dr S Karl Heeks

CEO and Founder

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Andrew Hopkins

VP Engineering and co-founder

 

 

 

 

 

Dr John Read

Non-Executive Director

John is an experienced manager with a record of developing profitable, high-tech semiconductor businesses. He has served on the board of a number of companies including Alphamosaic, Anadigm, Cyan Technology and Imsense. He is the representative on the board for Iceni and the South East Fund Managers.

　

Dr Luke Hakes

Board Observer

Luke is an Investment Manager in the Ventures division of Octopus Investments.　 Luke represents Octopus on the boards of a number of high technology start-ups in the Semiconductor and Engineering spaces.　 After starting his career as a research scientist Luke moved into Management and Technology consulting where he spent a number of years helping large blue chip companies address their performance and operational deficiencies.　 Luke holds a BSc in Biochemistry and Biotechnology, an MSc in Bioinformatics and a PhD in Computational Genetics.

　

Dr Jalil Oraee

Board Observer

Jalil has over 23 years of experience in the Semiconductor Industry during which he founded Oxford Semiconductor and then grew this small UK ASIC design centre to a respected fables semiconductor company with revenues exceeding $50m. The Company was acquired by PLX Technologies, a NASDAQ registered global supplier of switch and bridge silicon, in 2009 providing a 200:1 return on investment for the founders. Prior to Oxford Semiconductors Jalil was at AEA technology and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. He has a BSc (Hons) in Electronics and a PhD in Computational Modelling.

　

Advisors

Mr Steve Barlow

Steve is an electronics and software development veteran with over 25 years experience developing cutting-edge technology. He co-founded Alphamosaic, the video start-up, in 2001 which was successfully sold to Broadcom in 2004 for US$123M after which he stayed on as Senior Director of Engineering developing their next generation video solution with a team of 80 staff. Prior to this he spent 16 years at Cambridge Consultants where he was an Associate Director and leader of the Embedded Digital Systems group, developing a variety of innovative products. Steve has a starred first in Electrical Sciences from Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

　

Professor Stuart Jobbins

Stuart has over 26 years experience in software system development and technical management in embedded systems in a broad range of backgrounds including industrial, defence, automotive and aerospace. He has held senior technical positions at Siemens and Delphi and is currently Chief of Software Engineering and Head of the Software Centre of Excellence at Rolls Royce.