Covalent Metrology announced today that it had formed a Board of Directors and had appointed as outside Directors Tom St. Dennis and Raffi Garabedian.
Mr. St. Dennis is currently Chairman of the Board of FormFactor, Inc. and serves on the Boards of Veeco Instruments and Axcelis Technologies. Mr. Garabedian is currently Chief Technology Officer of First Solar, Inc.
Founder, CEO and fellow Board Member, Craig Hunter, commented, “It’s both exciting and humbling to welcome Tom and Raffi to the Covalent team as Board Directors. Each one of them is an accomplished leader with a enviable track record developing products and growing businesses. More importantly, they each possess a rare combination of judgement, creativity, experience and integrity and command admiration and respect from colleagues, partners and employees alike. I have no doubt that their insight and guidance will be invaluable as Covalent continues to grow and develop its innovative business model in analytical services.”
Mr. St. Dennis stated, “I have long felt that metrology and characterization excellence can be the difference between success and failure for companies in our space. Covalent Metrology has a vision to deliver high quality data, rapidly and at reasonable cost. The business model promises genuine innovation to a sector greatly in need of it.”
Mr. Garabedian added, “I know first hand the value of high quality metrology and characterization for companies making business-critical R&D and manufacturing decisions in materials, chemistry and device technologies. It’s exciting to be able to assist Covalent Metrology in its mission to create an enabling and democratizing one-stop-shop for rapid, diverse, high quality metrology and characterization data and advice.”
Tom St Dennis – Mr. St. Dennis is Chairman of the Board and former CEO of FormFactor, Inc. and serves on the Boards of Veeco Instruments, Inc., Axcelis Technologies, Inc., and JNI Corp.
Mr. St. Dennis has over 25 years of semiconductor industry experience and an extensive international business background, including broad expertise in customer sales and support, engineering and development, partnerships, licensing, supply chain and manufacturing. He previously served on the Boards of Mattson Technology, Inc. (until 2016) and Wind River Systems, Inc. (until 2003). He served as CEO at FormFactor, Inc. from 2010 to 2014 and as its Executive Chairman from 2013 to 2016. He served as the President and CEO of Wind River Systems, Inc. He held various leadership positions at Applied Materials. From 2007 to 2009, he was Senior VP and GM of the Silicon Systems Group at Applied Materials, Inc.
Mr. St. Dennis received an M.S. and B.S. in Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Raffi Garabedian – Mr. Garabedian is the current Chief Technology Officer of First Solar, Inc. and has held that position since May 2012. Mr. Garabedian joined First Solar in 2008 as Director of Disruptive Technologies and served as its Vice President of Advanced Technologies since 2010 and oversaw its advanced research and development (R&D) operations in Santa Clara, California. He founded Touchdown Technologies, Inc. and served as its Chief Executive Officer. He worked in the semiconductor and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) industries for over 15 years, developing new products ranging from automotive sensors to telecommunications switching systems. He worked with Integrated Micromachines as Vice President of product development, where he led its team which delivered a telecommunications photonic cross-connect switch. He holds 20 issued patents and has a proven track record in technical marketing, management and team building.
Mr. Garabedian holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic University and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis.
Covalent Metrology partners with clients to improve their overall metrology capabilities and ecosystem. In-house analytical services now include AFM, XRD/XRR, spectral ellipsometry, profilometry and UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometry. Their Metrology Partners unit offers a suite of services based on client-specific development objectives aimed at improving in-house and external metrology quality, speed and cost. Headquarters are located in the heart of Silicon Valley.
