The Speakers

IQE

Chris Meadows (IQE)

CSconnected: Building the world's first compound semiconductor community

Chris' career in electronics and semiconductors started at British Telecom Research Laboratories before joining a new joint venture between BT and US based DuPont in 1986.

Chris was part of the founding team at Epitaxial Products International Ltd (EPI) in Cardiff in 1988 which became IQE plc in 1999 following the merger with a US competitor and a successful IPO. Cardiff headquartered IQE is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AiM (IQE.L) and comprises multiple operations in the UK, Asia and the USA.

A science and engineering graduate, Chris also holds an MBA and has held a number of senior management positions within the IQE Group.

He is a Director of CSconnected Ltd, representing the world’s first compound semiconductor cluster that is rapidly evolving across South Wales and the West of England.

Aidan Goggin (Seagate)

HAMR Technology and the Laser Integration Challenges it Presents

Aidan Goggin is a Senior Manager in the Research and Development department of Seagate Technology in Derry, Northern Ireland. He studied Mechanical Engineering in the University of Limerick, graduating in 1998. He worked for 12 years as a research and development engineer in several medical device companies designing drug eluting stents, anti-reflux implants and vena cava filtration devices. In 2010 he joined the R&D department in Seagate Technology designing TMR sensors which act as the read sensor for reading data in a hard disk drive.

In 2005 he took up a position leading the newly formed Light Delivery Design team at the Derry site. This team are responsible for the design of the lightpaths and lasers within the integrated photonic systems used within a HAMR read-write head.

Seagate

NWF

Sam Evans (Newport Wafer Fab)

Newport Wafer Fab, The Innovation Village, Emerging Technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Sam is a quality and business excellence professional with over 30 years of experience in the semiconductor sector. A graduate of Cardiff University with an Honours Degree in Chemistry, joining INMOS in 1984 after completing a research Masters in thermodynamics.

Sam has extensive experience of building and maintaining business management systems based on IATF, EFQM and other best practise models as well as facilitating the development of strategic business plans using McKinsey and Hoshin techniques. During the past five years he has assisted the leadership team in transforming the business into a 100% On-time Delivery, Zero Defects operation.

In his current role as External Affairs Director for Newport Wafer Fab Sam acts as the main business officer working closely with the CS Connected community, Government and strategic customers to realize the potential of the Compound Semiconductor Cluster.

Nigel Yarrow (NPL)

Environmental monitoring - Differential Absorption LIDAR (DIAL)

Nigel is a chemistry graduate from the University of Southampton with previous experience working in the oil and gas industry. He is now a Higher Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in the Emissions and Atmospheric Metrology group.

He has worked at NPL for 3 years with his current focus on industrial emissions monitoring, particularly using DIAL. In that time he has been involved in numerous measurement campaigns across the world. He also works in the area of instrument validation and method development, providing traceable measurement services for companies to test their environmental monitoring equipment in controlled, real world, scenarios

NPL

Adam Scofield (Rockley Photonics)

A Photon-Optimized Silicon Photonics Platform for Sensing and Imaging

Rockley Photonics

Adam received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering and B.S. degree in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, in 2009 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, in 2011 and 2015, respectively.

He is currently the Manager of R&D with Rockley Photonics, where he leads the design of advanced silicon photonics passive and active devices, next-gen materials integration, and next-gen platform development. Most notably, he developed Rockley’s broadband, low loss, compact Mux for the company’s sensing products as well as the CWDM DeMux for the company’s transceiver and co-packaged optics products. Prior to joining Rockley, he was a Member of the Technical Staff at The Aerospace Corporation, where he lead a broad range of innovative R&D activities from fundamental optoelectronic device physics to photonic integrated circuits for optical signal processing, optical computing, and RF photonics.

Kevin Riddell (SPTS)

Plasma Processing at SPTS

Kevin Riddell is a Technologist in the R & D Accounts group at SPTS Primarily working on the etching of strongly bonded materials such as SiC, SiO2 & ScAlN on the Synapse etch module. Prior to joining SPTS in 1997 he gained a PhD from The University of Birmingham

SPTS

Brightening the future