Reference: HDD Industry Bios Part 1 of 2 [Diskcon 2003]
DISKCON USA 2003 Conference
Storage Technologies: Driving the Information Age
Speaker Biographies
Session 1
Executive Advisory Council/Insights into Storage
Kick-off Speaker: Dr. Mike Workman, President and CEO, Pillar Data Systems
Mike Workman, Ph.D., President and CEO, Pillar Data Systems, is the kick-off speaker at the DISKCON USA conference. Dr. Workman has spent his career breaking ground in the storage industry. In his 20 years in business his appointments have included vice president of worldwide development for IBM's storage technology division, senior vice president and chief technical officer of Conner Peripherals, and vice president of OEM storage subsystems for IBM. With direct development responsibility for over $17 billion worth of revenue, Mike's teams have produced over 60 storage products ranging from disk drives to NAS and SAN subsystems. He has co-authored several books on magnetic recording and a college text on digital control, and holds over fifteen technology patents. Mike has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, a Masters from Stanford University, and a Bachelors degree from UC Berkeley.
Ed Braun, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Veeco Instruments, Inc.
As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Veeco Instruments, Inc., Edward Braun led Veeco through an MBL in January 1990 and an IPC in 1994 and subsequently 11 acquisitions of metrology and equipment companies while increasing annual sales from $40M to a current level of $300M. Prior to 1990, Mr. Braun served as the Chief Operating Officer of the Predecessor Veeco/Lambda. Mr. Braun joined Veeco/Lambda in 1966 and held numerous positions including Director of Marketing, Director of Operations, and Vice President/General Manager, and Executive Vice President.
Mr. Braun earned a BSME from Clarkson College of Technology in 1961. He completed Stanford University's Executive Program for Management of High Technology Companies in 1980. Mr. Braun serves on the Board of Directors of (SEMI) Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, of which he was Chairman of the Board in 1993, and also serves on the Executive Advisory Council (IDEMA) International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association - the Data Storage trade association.
John Dean, Advisory Director, Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
John C. Dean is an Advisory Director in the Investment Banking Division at Citigroup in San Francisco, California. He was previously a Senior Analyst and Managing Director in Equity Research at Salomon Smith Barney. His primary coverage included all facets of Computer Storage. Mr. Dean has worked at Salomon Smith Barney for thirteen years and has accomplished a number of achievements as an analyst. John has received over two dozen equity research industry awards from the likes of Greenwich Associates, Wall Street Journal - All Star, Red Herring Magazine, Reuters, Bloomberg Inc., Institutional Investors All Star, and TheStreet.com. Mr. Dean joined Salomon Smith Barney in April of 1989, having served as a Partner and Director of Technology Research at Montgomery Securities from 1984 to 1989. Prior to joining Montgomery Securities, Mr. Dean worked at IBM Corporation for 16 years in a variety of sales, marketing and product development positions. John Dean earned a BSME from the University of California, Davis and a MBA from Santa Clara University.
Wayne Fortun, President and Chief Executive Officer, Hutchinson Technology Inc. (HTI)
Wayne started his career with Hutchinson Technology in 1975 and has held positions in engineering, marketing, and operations. In 1983, he was elected Director, President and Chief Operating Officer. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer in May of 1996.
Founded in 1965, the company has grown from a start-up operation housed in a chicken coop to a global company with over 3,400 employees. Hutchinson Technology is regarded as a technology leader in the industry and has established a reputation as a premier precision manufacturer. The company is headquartered in Hutchinson, Minnesota and has manufacturing operations in Plymouth, Minnesota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Sales support offices are located in Singapore, China, Thailand, Japan, and the Netherlands.
The company's Disk Drive Division supplies over half of the worldwide supply of suspension assemblies for all sizes of disk drives produced by the major disk drive manufacturers. The suspension assembly is a precise metal spring that holds the read/write head at a microscopic distance above the disk in disk drive. High-precision suspensions are critical to the operation of the drive.
Hutchinson Technology's BioMeasurement Division provides health professionals with simple, accurate methods to measure the oxygen in tissue. The division is in the fist year of a planned two-year market launch of a device that uses near infrared spectroscopy to measure local tissue oxygenation.
Wayne is on the board of directors for G&K Services, Inc., C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., Hutchinson Area Health Care, the Juran Center Executive Advisory Board and the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA) Executive Advisory Council (EAC).
Dr. Jun Naruse, Chief Executive Officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Dr. Jun Naruse is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, headquartered in San Jose, CA. His responsibilities in this role include managing the company’s team of senior executives, including those responsible for driving research and development and intellectual property.
Among his objectives for the company is the establishment of an organizational structure that encourages management flexibility, aggressive decision-making and accountability.
Dr. Naruse has worked for Hitachi Ltd. for more than 30 years, initially serving as a member of the Magnetic Head engineering department at Hitachi’s Data Storage and Retrieval Systems Division (STR). He held various engineering positions prior to joining the company’s management team in 1990.
His experience includes the executive management of several Hitachi core businesses, including Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), where he served as president and CEO. At HDS, he successfully reorganized the company into five independent business units and revitalized the corporate culture. As STR division president in Odawara, Japan, Dr. Naruse was responsible for establishing a new division structure, comprised of the subsystem and hard disk organizations.
He earned his Masters degrees in applied physics and Doctoral degree in engineering from Kyoto University. He also completed his undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering from Kyoto University in 1968.
Dr. Naruse holds numerous patents in both the U.S. and Japan. He has lectured at numerous universities and his articles have appeared in respected industry journals and publications.
Ichiro Komura, Corporate Vice President and Group President, Storage Products Group - Fujitsu, Ltd.
Associate Member, HR Reform Council, Bachelor of Arts in Law (Politics) from Tokyo University (March, 1972), Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Tokyo University (March, 1974)
Professional Career: Mr. Komura joined Fujitsu Limited in April 1974. He was named General Manager, Production Management Division, Information Processing Administration Group. In 1998, he became Group Senior Vice President, Computer Products Business Group. He was named Group Senior Vice President, Information Processing Administration Group in April 2000. He became a member of the Board of Directors in April 2001, and was named Group President, Platforms Business Promotion Group, Associate Member, HR Reform Council, and Group President, Storage Products Group. In 2003, he was named Corporate Vice President and Group President, Storage Products Group.
Matt Massengill, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Western Digital, Inc.
Matthew Massengill is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC). He was named chief executive officer in January 2000, and was elected chairman in November 2001. In his first two years as chief executive officer from 2000 to 2002, Matt Massengill and his team engineered a turnaround at Western Digital that included the re-emergence of WD as a premier supplier of hard drives to the PC industry, entry into new markets for its hard drive products such as gaming consoles, achieving the industry’s most efficient expense structure, and a return to profitable growth.
Massengill’s career at Western Digital spans 17 years, during which time he left the company on two occasions, in 1986 to help launch a startup software company and in 1990 when he managed a ranch in Oregon for a year and a half.
Massengill started at Western Digital as a product engineer in 1985, when the PC was in its earliest stages and Western Digital was playing a key role in the development of hard drive controllers and communications products. He held various engineering and marketing positions and was named vice president of marketing for the Personal Storage Division in 1993, after which Western Digital grew from a small supplier of hard drives to the world’s largest supplier of drives in the desktop PC market.
From 1998 to 2000, Massengill served as chief operating officer of WDC with responsibility for worldwide operations and geographies, research and development, and marketing, and as executive vice president and general manager of all worldwide hard drive operations including research, development, manufacturing and marketing of the entire product line of WD hard drives. From 1997 to 1998, he served as general manager of the Company’s Enterprise Storage business in Rochester, Minn.
An active member of his business and local communities, Massengill currently serves on the Board of Directors for Share Our Selves, a charity in Orange County, California, participates in the CEO Roundtable program at the University of California at Irvine and serves on the executive council of TechNet Orange County. He also served on the US Bancorp Advisory Board and Greater Rochester Area University Center (GRAUC) Board in Rochester, Minn.
Before joining Western Digital, Massengill served Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation for three years as a research engineer developing materials and devices for infra detectors and imaging systems. Matt Massengill received an engineering degree from Purdue University in 1983. He was honored with the Outstanding Electrical Engineering Alumni award from Purdue in 1998, as well as with the Distinguished Engineering Alumni award from the Schools of Engineering at Purdue in 2002.
Paul Tufano, President and Chief Executive Officer, Maxtor, Inc.
Paul Tufano has been acting president and chief executive officer of Maxtor Corporation since January 2003. He has over 20 years experience in the hard drive industry, primarily in senior management positions.
Mr. Tufano joined Maxtor in 1996 as chief financial officer. During his tenure, he had an important role in the company's growth from approximately $800 million in revenue in 1996 to $3.8 billion in 2002. He was instrumental in the company's successful initial public offering in July 1998, which raised $332.5 million, the largest IPO in the U.S. that year. Following Maxtor's acquisition of Quantum Corporation's hard drive group in April 2001, Mr. Tufano also became the chief operating officer. As COO, he assumed responsibility for manufacturing, logistics, and the supply chain.
Prior to joining Maxtor, Mr. Tufano was manager of worldwide logistics for IBM's storage systems division. During his 17 years at IBM, he held a variety of management positions in finance and operations. These positions included manager of plans and controls for IBM's desktop and mobile storage products business unit and controller for IBM's San Jose, California facility.
Mr. Tufano holds a degree in economics from St. John's University and an MBA in finance, accounting and international business from Columbia University.
Bill Watkins, President and Chief Operating Officer, Seagate Technology, Inc.
As President and Chief Operating Officer of Seagate Technology, Bill Watkins is responsible for all of Seagate's disc storage operations and related product development organizations. This responsibility includes manufacturing, quality and reliability of the world's largest manufacturer of disc drives and disc drive components, as well as the research and development of new component technologies, new products, and the continuing evaluation of alternative technologies. The operations within his organization include Disc Drive, Recording Head, Recording Media, Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA), motor design and development, VCM manufacturing, and product development. Watkins currently oversees activity at Seagate operations located in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Northern Ireland, and the United States.
Watkins developed the Disc Division of Conner Peripherals in 1990 and managed its success through the merger with Seagate in 1996, subsequently served as Executive Vice President of Seagate's Recording Media Operations, and was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Seagate in 1998. At Conner, he served as Senior Vice President of Heads and Media, and later as President of Disk Operations. He also led the commodity management center for heads and media at Conner. Prior to Seagate and Conner, Watkins managed the MINT (Magnetic Information Technology) disc media manufacturing process at Domain Technology. His career also includes ten years in the thin film, floppy diskette and photographic film process industries.
Watkins graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from the University of Texas. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Seagate Technology LLC, Iolon, Inc., and MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. He also serves on the Executive Advisory Council for IDEMA and the Executive Advisory Board of Juran Center for Leadership in Quality
Session 2
The HDD’s Industry Peaks and Valleys: A Financial and Business Outlook
Harry Blount, Senior Vice President, Lehman Brothers
Storage Networking and Internet Infrastructure Services
Harry Blount joined Lehman Brothers in November 2000. Mr. Blount was named to the Institutional Investor All-American analyst teams in 2000 and 2001 for the Internet Infrastructure Services category for his research on companies such as AboveNet, Akamai, Digex, Exodus, Genuity and InterNAP. He has over 16 years of experience as a sell-side analyst, recently adding coverage of the Storage Networking sector, which includes companies such as EMC, Network Appliance, Brocade, McData, and Quantum.
Mr. Blount currently serves on the advisory board of Innovent, a Nokia Ventures Organization company. Innovent evaluates emerging technologies such as dynamic mesh networks, Peer-to-peering computing, and intelligent agents.
Mr. Blount was the senior Internet Infrastructure Services analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin, & Jeanette from August 1999 until its merger with Credit Suisse First Boston in November 2000. Prior to joining DLJ, Mr. Blount spent two years at CIBC World Markets where he worked as the senior Internet Infrastructure & Telecommunications industry analyst. Coverage included hosting companies, competitive local exchange companies (CLECs), and large capitalization telecommunication companies – AT&T, WorldCom, and Sprint.
From September 1990 to July 1997, Mr. Blount covered the telecommunications industry and headed-up a five person technology research team at Rauscher Pierce Refsnes, Inc. While at Rauscher Pierce, he twice won Wall Street Journal recognition as a sector all-star, once as the top stock picker in his sector and once for earnings accuracy. From May 1986 to September 1990, Mr. Blount worked at Blunt Ellis & Loewi where he also covered telecommunications companies.
Mr. Blount was named a Wall Street Journal All-Star Analyst for Stock Picking and Earnings Estimate Accuracy in 1994 and 1995. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst who holds the Series 7 and Series 63 licenses. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and computer sciences from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse and completed coursework in Behavioral Finance at Harvard University.
William Lewis, Ph.D., Senior Equity Research Analyst, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Bill joined Hambrecht & Quist in March 1999 to focus in the areas of Storage Networking, Systems and Devices. Prior to joining H&Q, Bill worked at Intevac, a capital equipment supplier for the disk drive industry, and has held technical positions in the field for ten years. Bill was also a researcher at the Rand Corporation where he designed frameworks and metrics to assist Federal agencies in targeting investments in R&D in science and technology. He also worked on implementing processes for improved supply chain management and inventory control for the U.S. Army. Bill received a B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
John Donovan, Vice President, TrendFOCUS
John Donovan is Vice President of market research firm TrendFOCUS, Inc., a market research firm specializing in disk drives, computer systems, heads, media, and other disk drive storage components. Prior to joining TrendFOCUS in early 1996, he spent two years as Director of Marketing for Quantum Corporation and seven years as Director of Marketing for Applied Magnetics Corporation. At TrendFOCUS, Mr. Donovan published the Storage Demand Analysis System, the industry's first complete, statistically-based tracking system of computer system shipments, and demand trends and effects for disk drives and components.
Mark Miller, Research Analyst, Hoefer & Arnett
Prior to joining Hoefer and Arnett in 2000, Mr. Miller spent 25 years in a variety of industrial research and management positions. Approximately one-third of his technical career was spent in the areas of optical design and system development at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Mr. Miller served as the lead optical design engineer on the Solar Maximum Mission's Ultraviolet Spectrometer and Polarimeter and on NASA's COBE mission which mapped the big bang radiation. After leaving NASA, his work concentrated in the areas of optical and magnetic data storage, specifically media and magnetic head process and materials development. Mr. Miller has 40 technical publications and six patents and has given invited presentations at several universities. His equity research efforts at Hoefer and Arnett concentrate on the drive stocks and small and mid-cap semiconductor equipment stocks. Zacks investment service has recognized Mr. Miller as an all-star analyst for his coverage of the computer peripheral industry during each of the past three years.
Session 3
Key Updates from INSIC and Intermag & MMM Conferences
Dr. Robert Fontana, Research Staff Member, Recording Head Processing Group, San Jose Research Center, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Dr. Robert Fontana is a research staff member in the recording head processing group In the San Jose Research Center,Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Dr. Fontana received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, 1971,and 1975. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the recipient of the 2000 IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award for his work on head processing, past president of the IEEE Magnetics Society, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has authored 34 papers on magnetic devices and processes and has 52 patents in thin film magnetic structures.
Dr. Fontana's activities are in magnetic device processing, first at Texas Instruments with magnetic bubbles and then, beginning in 1981, at IBM with thin film heads and now continuing at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. He fabricated the first thin film MR heads and GMR heads for the IBM Company and transferred their process integration strategies to Manufacturing. His current processing activities are with tunnel valve and CPP GMR device structures developing processing and stabilization strategies for device manufacture at the sub 100 nm length scale.
Akira Kikitsu, Toshiba
Dr. Xiaoping Bian, Senior Development Engineer and Project Leader, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Inc.
Dr. Bian is currently a senior development engineer and project leader at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc,. Prior to that, he was a senior development engineer at the IBM Storage Technology Division, where he engaged in advanced magnetic recording media design and development. He obtained his Bachelor's and Master’s degrees in Physics at Lanzhou University in 1982 and 1987 respectively. He received a Ph.D. degree in Physics at McGill University in Montreal in 1994. He then did his post-doctoral training at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where he participated in the research projects of GMR and magnetic tunnel junctions. His expertise is on magnetic materials and thin film magnetism. He holds 7 patents and 26 scientific publications.
Paul D. Frank, Executive Director, International Storage Industry Consortium
Dr. Paul Frank has served as Executive Director of the Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) and its predecessor, the National Storage Industry Consortium (NSIC), since August 1999. Prior to joining NSIC, he had a 30-year association with Applied Magnetics Corporation, serving in various engineering and management roles including Vice President & Chief Technology Officer. At Applied Magnetics, he managed the development of technologies for disk heads, tape heads, head/media test systems and magneto-optical disk drive assemblies. During the early 1980’s, Paul was an active supporter in the formation of industry-supported university research centers in data storage technology, including those at UCSD, Carnegie Mellon and Santa Clara Universities. He was also part of the original group of company executives that started NSIC in 1990-1991, he served three terms as NSIC’s Chair of the Board and served on NSIC’s Executive Committee from 1992 to 1999. He holds BS and PhD degrees from the University of Washington.
Dr. Shan X. Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science & Engineering and Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
He received the B.S. degree in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1986, the M.S. in physics from Iowa State University in 1988, and the Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) at Pittsburgh in 1993.
He is an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and jointly in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He currently serves as the director of the Center for Research on Information Storage Materials (CRISM). He is also with the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, and is affiliated with Stanford Bio-X Program. His current research interests include bio-magnetic sensing, magnetoresistive materials and spin electronics, magnetic inductive heads and soft magnetic materials, as well as magnetic integrated inductors. He has published over 80 papers on these subjects. He and Alex Taratorin also published a book titled "Magnetic Information Storage Technology" through Academic Press.
Wang was a Frederick Terman Faculty Fellow at Stanford University (94-97), and an IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer (2001-2002). He also received an IBM Partnership Award in 1999, and was selected to the CUSPEA program organized by Nobel Laureate T. D. Lee in 1986.
Dr. Sining Mao, Director of Advanced Devices, Advanced Transducer Development, Recording Head Operations, Seagate Technology
Dr. Mao has been working at Seagate Recording Head in Minneapolis, Minnesota for more than 8 years. He is an director of advanced devices at advanced transducer development division. He and his group have been working on GMR and TMR and other writer technologies for both longitudinal and perpendicular magnetic recording for Seagate product staging.
Dr. Mao has more than 140 technical papers on advanced film materials and devices in semiconductors, superconductors and magnetic devices. He has 16 US patents issued and 15 pending. He has a PH. D. degree in Applied Physics from University of Maryland at College Park, and M. Sc. from Peking University in Beijing, China.
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