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Bio of Ivo Bolsens

 
 
5914 Porto Alegre Drive

San Jose 95120

California

 

 
 
Phone :  +1 408 9973181

Mobile : +1 408 2180046

Email :  bolsens@sbcglobal.net

 

 

 

 
 

Experience

April  2008 – now           Xilinx                                                       San Jose, CA

Xilinx is a fabless semiconductor company and is the leader in its segment of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) with a total revenue of  1.8B$ .

 

Chief Technology Officer , Senior Vice-President 

 
Senior Vice President with responsibility for  advanced development.
 

2001– April 2008                       Xilinx                                           San Jose, CA

Chief Technology Officer, Vice-President

Direct report to the CEO.  Heading corporate research with the objective to develop new technologies  for the advancement of existing business and to create new business opportunities.

The research organization is spanning projects  from developing system solutions in telecom and DSP to software programming tools and advanced circuit and manufacturing technologies.

Next to this, his responsibilities include corporate strategy and product portfolio management.as well as  business development.  This includes the incubation of new business units and the management of  the company’s  Venture Investments and  Merger and Acquisition strategy. He is managing a 250 M$ corporate venture fund.

As  part of the new business unit incubation responsibilities, he has been responsible for the creation and management of the Xilinx Design Service BU which achieved break-even, after 6 months in operation as P&L organization.

1994–2001                        IMEC                                                Leuven, Belgium

IMEC is the world’s largest independent research and incubation company in the field of  Nano-electronics and  Information Technology  

Vice-President  Design R&D

During his tenure, the research division  grew from  40 researchers with an annual contract  revenue  of 2 Million $  to a group of 200  R&D  engineers with an annual R&D contract  revenue of  more than 20 Million $.

 

During this same period he created  5 spin-off companies based on the research activities of his team : Sirius Communications (wireless communications, WCDMA,  chip set), Coware (tools for hardware/software co-design), Target Compilers (retargetable compiler), Smartmove (automotive infotainment  platform) and Septentrio Communications (GPS chip set) .  One joint venture was established in the field of Wireless LAN with  US based company, Resonext , which was later acquired by RFMD.

His responsibilities included the creation of the business plan, the raising of  money  from VC’s, the negotiation of   IMEC’s equity stake in return for transfer of IP-rights, the hiring of founding  team and the bring up of the startup during first 6 months.

 

1989–1994                        IMEC                                                Leuven, Belgium

Director

Director of the Applications and Design Technology group, focusing on the development and application of new chipsets  for mobile communication terminals. He  was responsible for the implementation of  programmable spread spectrum transceivers for satellite communications. This included the chip design of DSP and  RF functions as well as embedded software. 

   1984–1989                                     IMEC                                               Leuven, Belgium

R&D Manager

Joined IMEC from the start of the company. 

Started and lead  a  small research team working on the development of EDA tools for VLSI circuit verification and simulation.

 

1981–1984                        Catholic  University Leuven                    Belgium

Catholic University Leuven is the highest ranked university in Belgium
 
PhD Researcher and Teaching Assistant

Working on the development of CAD tools for the  electrical verification of VLSI circuits and on mixed-mode simulation.

Education

 

  • Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the Catholic University Leuven, Belgium
  • PhD  degree in Applied Sciences from the Catholic University Leuven,  Belgium

Graduated summa cum laude

 

Entrepreneur

 

·         1995, member of founding team of Sirius Communications, a company developing CDMA chip-sets for satellite communications and UMTS systems that was acquired by Agilent in 2001.

·         1996, member of founding team  of Coware Inc, a US-based EDA company developing and selling  hardware/software co-design tools. He was on the Technical Advisory Board of Coware from 1996 to 2000

·         1999, member of founding team of  Septentrio, a company developing GPS/Glonass satellite positioning systems. He was a member of the Board of Directors from 1999 to 2003

 

Awards

 

 

 

In 1986 he was recipient of  the Darlington Award of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society with the citation: "Best paper published by the IEEE CAS Society that bridges the gap between theory and practice".

 

In 1998, at the Design Automation Conference, he received  award for the best paper  presentation.

 

In 2000 he received the Golden Core Member Award of the IEEE Computer Society “ for leadership and service to the IEEE Computer Society, the world’s preeminent association of computing professionals “

 

In 2000 he received an Outstanding Contributions Award of the IEEE Electrical Society “for successfully chairing the Design and Test Conference, the major European design automation and test conference”

 

In 2001 he received the European  ITEA Achievement Award for  outstanding contributions to progress in Information Technology in Europe and his participation in the  development  the European Technology Roadmap on Embedded Systems

 

In 2001,  he co-authored the paper  'A digital 80Mb/s OFDM transceiver IC for wireless LAN in the 5GHz Band' which was  selected in the International Solid-State Circuits Conference's    50th Anniversary Virtual Museum  as one of the most influential  papers in the history of  ISSCC.

 

He is holding 7  patents in the field of wireless communications, image processing and HW/SW co-design

 

He has authored or  co-authored more than 100 peer reviewed technical papers.

   

 

Board Member

He is/was member of the Technical Advisory Board of  the companies :

  • Alcatel from 1998 until 2001  (telecom)
  • Coware from 1996 until 2001 (embedded SW)
  • Ziptronix from 2002 until today (chip packaging)
  • IMEC from 2002 until today (micro-electronics)

 

He is member of the Industry  Advisory  Board of 

  •             Santa Clara University : Engineering Department
  •             San Jose State University :  Engineering Department
  •             UC Berkeley, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
  •             Competence Center for Circuit Design , University of Lund, Sweden
  •             Giga Scale Research Center, UC Berkeley
  •             DARPA/SRC Focus Research Centre Program
He is/was  a member of the Board of  Directors of
  •      Septentrio  from 2000 until 2003 ( a satellite navigation company)
  •      DSP Valley from start-up until 2001  ( a non-profit regional business-network)
  •      Convey Computing from 2007 until today ( High Performance Computing startup)
  •      AutoESL from 2008 until today (Embedded System Design tools)
 
 
 
Married to Martine Peetermans, teacher French language.

Children :  Joris Bolsens, 15

                Marijke Bolsens, 14

Hobbies :   Horses, Movies, French Food and Belgian Beer