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)

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.

(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 been awarded 6 US patents (and more pending) 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.

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.

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.