Steve Neill Chairman of NMI, Vice President, Bristol Design Centre and Technical Director, Infineon Technologies (UK) Ltd
Derek Boyd, Chief Executive Officer, National Microelectronics Institute
Gerry Edwards Vice President & Managing Director, National Semiconductor (UK) Ltd
Stuart Langdon European Facilities Director, International Rectifier
Richard Kerrigan General Manager, Filtronic Compound Semiconductors Ltd
David Burrows Director, Micron Imaging Design Centre
Ron Dickinson, Operations Director, Freescale Semiconductor
Professor Anthony O'Neill, Newcastle University
Patrick McNamee, CSR

Steve graduated in electronics from Hull University in 1982 and joined the Semiconductor Components group of ICL in Kidsgrove. After joining Inmos in 1984 Steve was involved in a number of processor development projects.

Steve joined Infineon Technologies (IFX) in 1999, initially responsible for a Central R&D development group focusing on processor development. Based out of the newly opened IFX Bristol Design Centre with the consolidation of activities in 2000 he took up the role as head of the design centre. Steve has now been actively involved over the last 15 years in driving six processor development projects covering a wide spectrum of performance and application.

He presently holds a seat on the IFX (UK) Board and is Chairman of the National Microelectronics Institute.

Derek graduated in 1984 with a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and completed a Master of Business Administration in 1994.

He has been with NMI since October 2001, firstly in a Business Consultant role, then as Chief Executive since April 2003.

Derek has broad experience in the electronics and semiconductor industries coming from a background in Compaq, National Semiconductor and NEC.

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Gerry holds a BSc (Hons) in Physics from Lancaster University and an MBA from the University of Wales. He is a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (MIET). Gerry started out at Motorola in East Kilbride, before heading to the US to work for Texas Instruments and then a new start up business called Inmos. Returning to the UK with Inmos, which was later purchased by ST Microelectronics, he spent the next 10 years at their plant in Newport, playing an instrumental role in making the plant cost competitive. In 1992 Gerry was approached by Philips Semiconductors to head up their sub-micron facility in the Netherlands. In 1996 Gerry moved back to Scotland to take up the post of Operations Director at National Semiconductor in Greenock. In March 2000 he was appointed Managing Director and in December 2000 was promoted to Vice President of Operations.

Gerry is a Board Director of the National Microelectronics Institute, President of Scottish Engineering and Chairman of the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service (SMAS). He is also a Non-Executive Director of Scottish Enterprise Renfrewshire

In 2002 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Paisley for his contribution to manufacturing and at the 2007 Birthday Honours Awards he received an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) for his services to Scottish business.

Stuart received his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering and then went on to complete an MSc in Facilities Management. He has 18 years Semiconductor experience and has held various Facilities and Management roles at Plessey Semiconductors, GEC, and Zarlink. He currently holds the position of European Facilities Director at International Rectifier, Newport, South Wales and is Chairman of IR’s world wide Facilities Council.

Richard Kerrigan is the General Manager of Filtronic Compound Semiconductors Ltd (FCSL) based in the North East of England.

Richard has over 30 years experience in the high volume semiconductor manufacturing sector with emphasis on the commercial and general management aspect of business. He was FCSL’s first employee and led the establishment of this high volume business unit. Prior to this Richard was a Director of the silicon based manufacturing plant of Fujitsu Microelectronics Ltd.

Earlier semiconductor involvement included Plessey Semiconductors Ltd and the main European manufacturing plant of Motorola Ltd.

After receiving his PhD from Bath University in 1982 in mobile radio and control theory, David joined Plessey to work on digital systems using field programmable hardware. In 1983, he set up the silicon engineering group at Roke Manor to develop structured design methods and CAD tools in the areas of built in self test and logic synthesis. David took up a position at LSI Logic responsible for mixed signal CAD development in 1988. At the end of 1998 he established a new R&D organisation for Micron Corporation, comprised initially of ex-LSI employees, to develop logic & mixed signal IP for all Micron's embedded memory technologies. This includes the design of core logic and mixed signal circuits, I/O cells, custom memory, memory compilers and processor super-core development. The team developed SOCrates, a highly integrated MIPs-based SOC including 8Mbytes of DRAM, and Yukon-256, a 16Mbyte DRAM incorporating a 56 billion operations per second SIMD processing array. Early 2003 the department was focused on foundation IP design and product design to support Micron's CMOS Imaging product range. Recent tapeouts include Image sensors for both mobile and consumer applications, with high speed interfaces for automotive & mobile applications.

David is the Director of Micron Imaging UK Design Centre and a Board Director of the National Microelectronics Institute.

Ron Dickinson is a seasoned electronics industry professional, with over 25 years of global industry experience.

His current role is Senior Director, Wafer Fab Operations and General Manager of Freescale Semiconductor’s East Kilbride Site. Ron joined Freescale in March 2005 after 6 years with Chartered Semiconductors in Singapore, where he was Vice President of Fab 2 Operations, and then VP of Quality and Reliability Assurance. Prior to Chartered, Ron’s experience included a series of engineering management positions with Motorola Semiconductors in East Kilbride and with Seagate in Livingston.

Ron has a BSc with Honours in Chemistry, a PhD in Physical Chemistry and holds one US patent. He is a member of Freescale UK’S Board of Directors, the Board of Trustees of the Glasgow Science Centre and the Board of Directors of the National Microelectronics Institute.

In his spare time, he is a keen runner and enjoys hillwalking.

Anthony O'Neill graduated from Nottingham University with a BSc in Physics and St Andrews University with a PhD in Semiconductor Physics. He worked for Plessey Research (Caswell) Ltd before joining Newcastle University in 1986. Since then he has built up an internationally recognised research group with research strengths in: (i) Strained Si/SiGe technology, for high speed, low power electronics; (ii) Silicon Carbide technology for high temperature and high power electronics; (iii) Interconnect reliability, in particular the study of electromigration and stressmigration. He is currently Siemens professor of microelectronics and professor of physical electronics.
In 1994 he was Visiting Scientist at the Microsystems Technology Laboratories of MIT, Cambridge USA. In 2002 He became a Royal Society Industry Fellow, with Atmel North Tyneside Ltd, UK.

He is coordinating the Si Futures network of 13 leading UK universities engaged in research on Si technology.

Patrick has worked for CSR since 2001 where he is VP of Product Engineering; he is responsible for all yield, quality and reliability issues affecting CSR’s manufacturing and sub contracting partners. CSR is a fabless semiconductor company that manufacture a range of wireless devices using Bluetooth and Wifi technologies aimed pre-dominantly at the mobile handset market place.

Prior to CSR, Patrick was with Dialog Semiconductor, a fabless start-up company based in Swindon and Stuttgart which supplied Power management and audio processing asics to a range of companies. Dialog grew to a turnover of over $250M at its peak and floated on both German and U.S stock markets.

Patrick spent his early career with National Semiconductor and then GEC Plessey Semiconductor where he served in a number of engineering departments.