Dr. Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre
Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre is the President & CEO of Finwave Semiconductor a leading GaN (Gallium Nitride) semiconductor startup company with a disruptive 8” GaN-on-Si technology for 5G/6G cellular infrastructure, handset market and other RF applications. Finwave is focused on delivering high performance RF Switches and Power Amplifiers.
Prior to that he was the President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director of Nanometrics from November 2017 till October 2019. He served as CEO through the company’s merger with Rudolph Technologies, completed in October 2019 to form Onto Innovation. Nanometrics was a leading provider of high-performance process control metrology and inspection systems used primarily in the fabrication of integrated circuits, discrete components, high-brightness LEDs, and data storage devices worldwide.
From January 2012 to February 2017, Dr. Lesaicherre was CEO of Lumileds, a leading global light engine company, with revenues in excess of $2 billion, that supplies high-quality LED components to the downstream segments of the lighting and consumer industries as well as LED and conventional lamps to the automotive industry.
Prior to that, Dr. Lesaicherre served as Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Microcontrollers & Logic Business Lines in the High-Performance Mixed Signal Business Unit at NXP. In earlier roles, he served as General Manager of several business lines and product lines, including Standard ICs, Interface Products, Specialty Logic and PC Motherboard ICs. Before NXP, Dr. Lesaicherre was with Philips Semiconductors.
Prior to NXP, Dr. Lesaicherre served as Research Engineer and then Process Technology Development Manager for NEC Corporation in Japan where he helped develop what was considered the most advanced memory technology in 1994, the first 1Gbit DRAM capacitor.
He has co-authored five patents and published multiple technical papers and has an extensive background in solid state physics and semiconductor technology research. Dr Lesaicherre has experience in R&D, marketing, business development, executive management in the semiconductor, LED, opto-electronic and semi equipment markets and served several years as board member of non-profit, private (Silvaco) as well as Nasdaq-listed public companies (Nanometrics, InterDigital).
He is a Board Leadership Fellow, Governance Fellow and Director Certified for NACD (National Association of Corporate Directors), holds an NACD CERT certificate in Cyber-Risk Oversight and is an active member of NACD and SVDX (Silicon Valley Director’s Exchange).
Dr. Lesaicherre holds an MBA with a focus on International Business and Strategy from INSEAD, and has an MS degree and a PhD degree in Material Science from the Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP – Phelma).