"Kleer's digital radio transmission technology produces excellent sound quality which means that for the first time, we're in a position to offer our customers wireless earphones without compromising our special Sennheiser sound. Kleer's very low audio signal latency, coupled with extremely interference-free transmission also translates into considerably longer battery life than what you'd get with conventional transmission standards."
Stijn Jans, Managing Director of Sennheiser Consumer Electronics, Singapore branch
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Board of Directors
Levent Gun, President & CEO
Levent joined Kleer in December of 2003 in conjunction with the Company’s series A funding led by US Venture Partners. Levent had been an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at USVP, helping the firm with investments in the communications area. Prior to USVP, Levent was President and CEO of Iospan Wireless, pioneer in MIMO technology acquired by Intel. Previously, Levent co-founded and lead US Robotics’ Cable Data Business and transformed this start-up into a mature business after 3COM’s acquisition of US Robotics. Early in his career, Levent held various engineering management and leadership positions at Motorola and IBM, and held positions at several universities and research labs. Levent earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland and undergraduate degrees in engineering and mathematics from Bogazici University in Turkey. He has published extensively in technical journals and holds 14 patents.
Ralph Mason P.Eng., Ph.D., Co-Founder, CTO
Ralph is a leader in the area of analog/mixed signal circuit design. Prior to founding Kleer, he was the product line manager and senior analog IC design engineer with Philsar Electronics (acquired by Conexant), he has been actively involved in integrated circuit (IC) related research and development for 17 years. Ralph has successfully developed eight commercial ICs including the world’s largest integrated LCD display driver (1985), the first high volume electronic parking meter IC (1991) and the lowest power/highest sensitivity WPAN transceiver (1999). Ralph has been involved in extensive research in analog and digital IC design and test and wireless system design. He is a member of an IC research group with five faculty and 40 graduate students, has published more than 60 technical papers, and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in areas of analog and mixed signal IC design. Previously he was the CTO of Analog Design Automation (acquired by Synopsys), former product manager and senior engineer with Applied Microelectronics and a former IC designer with Siltronix and Litton Systems.
Arati Prabhakar, Partner, USVP
Arati Prabhakar joined U.S. Venture Partners in 2001 after 15 years of working with world-class engineers and scientists across many fields to brew new technologies. At USVP, her focus is fabless semiconductor and semiconductor manufacturing opportunities. She serves on the boards of Kilopass, Kleer, Lightspeed Logic, Pivotal Systems, and SiBeam. She previously served on the board of Leadis Technology (NASDAQ: LDIS).
Arati was a program manager and then director of the Microelectronics Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from 1986 to 1993. At DARPA, she supported R&D in company and university labs in semiconductor manufacturing, imaging, optoelectronics and nanoelectronics. In 1993, President Clinton appointed Arati Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she led the 3,000 person staff until 1997. Arati then joined Raychem as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. She was subsequently Vice President and then President of Interval Research Corporation. Arati began her career as a Congressional fellow at the Office of Technology Assessment.
Arati received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University. She received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology. Arati is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Joel Dedrick
Joel is a 25+ year veteran of the Semiconductor Industry. Most recently as an Executive in Residence at USVP, he helped a number of companies refine their business plans and obtain initial funding. In addition to Kleer, Joel served on the board of Veriwave (wireless LAN test equipment), and was a board observer at Axiom Microdevices (CMOS cellular power amps), Optichron (nonlinear DSP), Synfora (automated hardware/software partitioning), and Ditrans (CDMA transceiver IC’s).
Prior to USVP, Joel was part of the executive team at Aanetcom, which was acquired by PMC-Sierra (PMCS) in February of 2000. AT PMC, Joel helped define the company’s 10Gbps Ethernet product strategy. Previously, Joel held executive management and engineering management roles at Integrated Device Technology (IDTI), Vitesse Semiconductor (VTSS), and Logic Devices, Inc. (LOGC). Joel holds Electrical Engineering degrees from the University of Nebraska and Southern Methodist University.
Anthony Chang, Managing Director, TL Ventures
Anthony joined TL Ventures in August 2002 as a Principal and Kauffman Fellow. Anthony has a wealth of operations, finance, and venture capital experiences. Prior to TL Ventures, he was a Senior Manager with GE Equity where he sourced and led early-stage technology investments in Asia. Before GE Equity, Anthony co-founded and built magictel.com, a voice-over-IP service provider in Hong Kong. He led magictel.com's reverse takeover of a public company in Hong Kong and raised over US$100M in the public markets.
Anthony started his career with the San Francisco Consulting Group as a strategy consultant to technology and communications clients. During business school, he was also a product management intern with Lucent's Mobility Solutions Group.
Anthony holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. (with honors) from Stanford University. He is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and proficient in Shanghainese.
Paul Smelters, Director, VenGrowth
Paul recently joined VenGrowth in 2005 as an Investment Director. He has over 25 years in advanced technology design, R&D management, and product/business management, with working experience in semiconductors, voice gateways, switching/routing products, and wireless networks. Prior to joining VenGrowth, Paul was with Nortel Networks.
Patrick Brockett, President and CEO, Summit Microelectronics Inc.
Prior to Summit Mr. Brockett was most recently at Zarlink Semiconductor as President and CEO from 2001-2005. Previously Mr. Brockett spent 20 years at National Semiconductor in various management roles including Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Analog Division from 1997-2000 and Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales from 1990-1997. From 1967-1979 he was with Texas Instruments in sales and sales-management roles.
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