D2D is led by a world-class team of passionate technology innovators and leaders from the academia and semiconductor industry committed to revolutionize next-generation electronics through transformative materials, processes, and tools.

(Co-founder)

Ravi Iyengar is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor and technology veteran, and a leading industry figure in processor design. He has led architecture teams at state-of-the-art semiconductor companies such as Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung and AMD. He has 12 patents and has published several technical papers in reputed international journals. Ravi has been an entrepreneur and investor in the Bitcoin & Blockchain space since 2013. He was a founding partner at Turiya Ventures, an early stage blockchain venture fund, and an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Khosla Labs.

(Co-founder)

Kaustav Banerjee is one of the world’s leading innovators in the field of nanoelectronics. His invention of the graphene inductors that overcame a 200-year-old limitation has been called “a trillion-dollar breakthrough” by the Forbes magazine. Kaustav is also the pioneer behind graphene interconnects. He is a tenured professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara, and an elected Fellow of multiple professional societies including IEEE, APS, JSPS, and AAAS. He is a recipient of the coveted Bessel Prize from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany. His seminal contributions to nanoelectronics have been widely commercialized and recognized with the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, one of the institute’s highest honors. Kaustav holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley.

Chief Scientist, Nobel Laureate

Sir Dr. Konstantin Novoselov is an established physicist, specializing in the area of condensed matter physics, mesoscopic physics and nanotechnology. His work on graphene with Andre Geim earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. Novoselov is a professor at the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore and is also the Langworthy Professor of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. He has broad research interests from mesoscopic phenomena in ferromagnets and superconductors to electronic properties of two-dimensional (2D) electron gas in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures and graphene. He also has got a vast background in nanofabrication and nanotechnology.

Professor Novoselov has published over 320 papers with more than 25 papers in Nature and Science, more than 45 Nature Physics, Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Communications papers and 16 Physical Review Letters. Professor Novoselov’s two papers in Science 2004 and Nature 2005 are the most cited papers on graphene. The Science paper was also included into the top 100 most cited papers of all time among all subjects.

Dave Silvetti was a Vice President at Applied Materials (AMAT) before joining Destination 2D. During his 35+ years at AMAT, Dave had contributed greatly in ALD, CMP, EPI, DSM WW Operations, PPC and the Common Systems Group (CSG). He led the development of numerous successful products and applications, including the Producer GT for CVD, Reflexion GT for CMP, Nokota for plating, and most recently the Olympia for ALD applications. The Producer is the industry standard for productivity and reliability and has won the Semiconductor Editor’s Choice Award and the Dan Maydan Award in 2010. Dave holds over 30 patents and has been a long-standing member of AMAT’s Engineering Governance Board. Overall, Dave brings strong leadership and broad experience in transitioning beta-stage platforms to runaway commercial success.

Nalin Rupesinghe has nearly two decades of experience in semiconductor manufacturing tool and process development including graphene and other 2D materials. He has been the founder of a successful start-up tool company, Nanoinstruments Ltd, UK, (acquired by AIXTRON in 2007). He has contributed to many EU funded research projects including “Graphene Flagship” as the deputy for “Production”. He is the author/co-author of 60+ papers and 15 patents/filed applications. Nalin holds a PhD from Cambridge University, UK.

Frank Hochstenbach is a former Senior Director of Sales & Service at Applied Materials (AMAT) has 37 years of experience in semiconductor manufacturing technology. He has held leadership positions in technical marketing, product management, sales, and customer collaborations at leading companies, such as Philips Semiconductors (NXP), Applied Materials, Bede X-Ray Metrology (Bruker), Cymer Lasers (ASML), and VDL Enabling Technologies Group. He has a strong and extensive track record in new Product / Technology positioning, market introductions and customer engagement.

Dr. Klaus Schuegraf has three decades experience in the semiconductor and capital equipment industries. Klaus held senior executive roles at ASML/Cymer, Applied Materials, SanDisk and Intel, gaining deep expertise in business strategy, product development, technology development and supply chain. As Group Vice President at ASML/Cymer, Klaus led the successful development of the EUV light source. At Applied Materials, as Corporate Vice President and Silicon Systems Group CTO, Klaus drove Applied’s integrated equipment roadmap and investment portfolio. Klaus has a PhD from UC Berkeley and an MS from Stanford, both in Electrical Engineering.

Satish Sundar has over 25 years of experience developing products in the semiconductor equipment, control systems, industrial and autonomous robotics, medical devices and consumer electronics industries. He currently runs a systems engineering solutions company called RAAD systems. He was a Senior Member of Technical Staff and Engineering Manager at Applied Materials before starting a successful entrepreneurial journey. Dr. Sundar’s product launches include industry leading wafer fabrication equipment such as Producer, Producer SE and Producer GT. Dr. Sundar holds a PhD from UCLA and BTech from IIT Madras, and holds in excess of 50 patents and has numerous journal and conference publications.

Dr. Israel Beinglass has over 25 years of experience in the semiconductor equipment and manufacturing industry. He served in a variety of executive roles at Applied Materials – where he was General Manager of the High Temperature Films Group, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Front End Equipment Group, and later CTO of Applied Global Services Group. He also served as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of the CMP division and CTO for the Thin Films Group (TFG). Dr. Beinglass was involved in numerous successful acquisitions and was a member of Applied Materials Strategy and Marketing councils. Before joining Applied Materials, Dr. Beinglass worked at Intel Corporation in various positions, including process development manager and engineering manager of fab operations. Dr. Beinglass is the industry pioneer of selective deposition; he is the co-inventor of the selective tungsten deposition process and an earlier developer of selective Epi deposition. He also was instrumental in developing the industry’s first single-chamber polysilicon deposition system and an integrated, multi-chamber Policide system. Dr. Beinglass holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; he completed post-doctoral research at UCSF and is the holder of 30 US patents (806 citations) as well as several pending patents.

Brian Cronquist has over 34 years of semiconductor industry experience, most recently as Sr. Dir. Technology Development & Foundry at non-volatile FPGA provider Actel. He has global experience on “both sides of the silicon wafer table”: starting and building Chartered Semiconductor (Singapore) technology, and non-volatile FPGA technology at Actel as a fabless partner. He also led startup wafer fab engineering teams at Sierra Semiconductor, now PMC-Sierra, and developed new process technology at AMI and Synertek/Honeywell. Brian has published over 100 technical papers in the fields of semiconductor microelectronic radiation effects and hardening, as well as new 3D-IC, logic, antifuse & flash processes, devices, and reliability, and he holds over 50 issued or pending patents. Mr. Cronquist graduated cum laude (Chemistry Medal) in Chemistry from Santa Clara University in 1979. Currently, he is a visiting researcher at the Rice University Chemistry Department and an Industry Affiliate Partner at the Stanford University Nanofabrication Facility.

Sagar Pushpala has over 35 years of Operational, Technology, Business Development, Venture Capital and Incubator investment experience. In his last operational role, he headed engineering operations for Nuvia along with their founding team (ex-Apple), and exited to Qualcomm as part of the acquisition ($1.4B).  He was previously Vice President of Business Development at TSMC. Prior to that, he was CEO of TSI Semiconductors (now Bosch), a specialty analog mixed-signal foundry.. He was an Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures, positioning investments and scaling companies to exits. For 25 years preceding, Sagar had held executive and senior-level operations, engineering, and technology management positions at analog mixed-signal companies such as Intersil (now Renesas), Maxim (now Analog Devices), National Semiconductor (now Texas Instruments), Saratoga Semiconductor (Maxim acquired Mfg. assets), and AMD. In addition, he has held board positions in various industry consortiums, including the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) and the Fab Owners Association (FOA).

Sagar holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, and a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from The University of Kansas, USA.

Joseph Bach served as an in-house attorney with Applied Materials, Inc. for over 8 years. He has extensive experience in building and managing patent portfolios and in patent litigation in the areas of materials, equipment and processes involved in fabrication of semiconductor chips, solar cells and LEDs (Si, SiC, CVD, PVD, Etch, Implant, etc), chip testing and debugging (LIT, emission microscopy, nanoprobe, etc), computing and mobile platforms software and hardware, computing storage, etc. Joseph holds a B.S. in Applied Science from CalTech, JD from Duke University, and MBA from Stanford.

Carmelo Gordian brings 30+ years of experience as a corporate counsel. Carmelo has acted as counsel in 56 public offering transactions with 28 transactions representing the company, 25 transactions representing underwriters and three transactions advising significant shareholders. He has also acted as company and investment counsel on several hundred private offerings principally venture financings over the past 30 years. Carmelo advises companies and boards of directors on corporate governance issues as well as serving as counsel to special committees formed by boards of directors and has an active practice representing GPs and LPs of hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital and real estate funds. He is often quoted in the press, and is a frequent speaker and author, on emerging growth, venture capital and IPOs among other topics. Carmelo obtained his J.D. from Harvard Law School and B.A. from Harvard University.

Following a PhD on spintronics from the University of York, in collaboration with Tohoku University, Luke undertook postdoctoral research at Imperial College and University College London. In 2013, Luke transitioned into academic publishing, going on to lead a team of editors responsible for selecting the research papers that were published in Nature across a range of fields, including materials science, physics, astronomy and electronics — in his role, Luke brought breakthroughs such as Quantum supremacy and Superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene to the pages of Nature, was a regular speaker at conferences, and led a number workshops on science communication. In 2021 Luke joined a stealth mode semiconductor startup based in the San Francisco Bay Area as Chief Of Staff to the CEO, becoming VP Operations in 2022, overseeing people and business operations as well as a variety of other tasks, such as investor relations, government programs, and is currently helping to lead the finance team.