History
Executive Team
Board of Directors |
Board of Directors
Graham Siddall, Ph.D.
Chairman
Dr. Siddall served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Credence Systems from August 2001 until his retirement in October 2005. Prior to joining Credence in 1999, Dr. Siddall was an executive vice president of KLA-Tencor Corporation, a leading supplier of process control and yield management equipment for the semiconductor industry. Prior to the merger of Tencor Instruments and KLA Instruments, Dr. Siddall served as chief operating officer and executive vice president of Tencor Instruments. Before joining Tencor, Dr. Siddall held various senior management positions at GCA Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and at Rank Taylor Hobson in the UK. Dr. Siddall is a past president of the American Society for Precision Engineering. He holds several patents and earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Natural Philosophy (Physics) in 1971 and 1975, respectively, from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He previously earned a BS degree in Production Engineering and Management with First Class honors from the University of Nottingham in England and came to the US in 1976 as a Lindemann post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University. Dr. Siddall is currently involved with a number of start-up companies and is Chairman of the Board of Nuforce, Inc., as well as a member of the Board of Directors of ReVera, Inc. and an Advisory Board Member of Dali Wireless
Israel Niv, Ph.D.
In Late 1998 Dr. Niv co-founded and became the Chairman, and later CEO, of Optonics, Inc., which at the time was a leading supplier of design debug and failure analysis systems for high bandwidth timing analysis of transistor-to-transistor switching events. Dr. Niv sold Optonics to Credence Systems in late 2002 and served as a president and general manager of the Diagnostics and Characterization business Group (DCG): a division whose revenue rapidly grew from $2M in 2001 to $18.5M in 2004 and ultimately $52M in 2005. During his tenure at Credence, he was responsible for building DCG through internal development of new products, and successfully integrated the NPTest Probe Systems group after its acquisition by Credence Systems Corporation in June 2004. In May of 1999, Dr. Niv co-founded BeyondWork - an on-line provider of employees benefits, mainly “Rewards and Recognition” system and Discount shopping. BeyondWork raised $15M during the Internet high days and served over 4000 companies. Dr. Niv served as the CEO and Chairman of the company until August 2001. Dr. Niv co-founded Opal Inc., a semiconductor equipment company, in December 1986. Opal was an innovator and a world leader in Automated CD-SEM metrology and in SEM Defect Review systems. He served as the Vice-President of Research and Development, later as the General Manager & Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing. He served on Opal's Board of Directors since 1994 and was part of a 3-man team that took Opal public in May 1995. Dr. Niv led the growth of Opal sales from $2.1M in 1991 to $65M in 1996. He became a Vice-President at Applied Materials, the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer, when it acquired Opal Inc. in late 1996. At Applied Materials, Dr. Niv was responsible for the sales, marketing and business development of the Process Diagnostics and Control (PDC) Business group until the end of 1998 (over $150M in annual sales). Prior to Opal, Dr. Niv was a senior physicist at Optrotech (currently Orbotech), the world leader in PCB and FPD inspection. Dr. Niv is currently the Chairman of the Board of Jordan valley Semiconductors (a Semiconductor Metrology equipment company), serves on the board of Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (an academic institution affiliated with Stanford), and is advisor to several start-ups and to SilicomVentures, an investment group. Dr. Niv received his B.Sc. in Chemistry, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In 1982 Dr. Niv was awarded the Weizmann Postdoctoral Fellow. From 1982 to 1985 he worked as a Post doctorate at the University of Southern California (USC) and published over 10 scientific papers. In 1992, Dr. Niv completed the AEA/Stanford Executive Institute for Management of High-Technology Companies.
Dave Staats
Dave Staats currently serves as Vice President of Business Development for Spirox Corporation, a Taiwanese Semiconductor Equipment Distribution Company, where he is responsible for driving the organization's business development activities and strategic initiatives. Mr. Staats has held several key management positions with the Spirox organization for over 10 years and most recently has been responsible for driving the organization's business development activities and strategic initiatives. Mr. Staats played a leading role in expanding the Spirox portfolio through successfully integrating numerous strategic mergers and acquisitions. He holds a Bachelor of Science in International Business & Foreign Affairs from the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington.
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