Jim LaCasse is President and CEO NexPlanar after holding senior management positions in global semiconductor materials companies.
Most recently, Jim was CEO of Quantum Leap Packaging, a venture capital backed start-up in the Boston area. Prior to that, he served as President of Sumitomo Chemical’s Electronic Materials Business where he was responsible for opening its Phoenix-based headquarters for North American operations and driving several acquisitions.
Earlier, Jim spent seventeen years in various roles with Olin Corporation. During his tenure, he launched a number of stand-alone businesses and drove several acquisitions and joint ventures including Planar Solutions, a leading CMP slurry vendor. Jim also ran Asian operations for five years and was later promoted to Vice President and General Manager of the Division. When Olin spun off its microelectronics business into Arch Chemical, Jim remained as VP and GM until 2000 when he left to start a business in the fab services segment.
Jim has a BS from LeMoyne College, and MA and MBA degrees from the Drucker School at the Claremont Graduate University. He is a member of the board or directors of NexPlanar and Inpria Corporation and has served as director on several other boards in Japan and the US.
David Davies is responsible for all finance and administrative functions at NexPlanar. He brings over twenty years of management experience in a variety of venture funded high-tech companies, including hardware, software and internet businesses.
David has raised numerous rounds of venture capital and has orchestrated the sale and acquisition of several companies. His prior firms include Corrigo, a wireless, internet service provider of work order management software; Protools, a provider of network protocol analysis software; Photon Kinetics, a manufacturer of fiber optic test and measurement equipment; and Intel.
David has a BA from Williams College and an MBA from Wharton.
Wey Hwang is responsible for all NexPlanar's CMP activities in Taiwan, China and Singapore. Wey also manages the applications group and directs customer application engagements.
Before joining NexPlanar, Wey was Managing Director of the Diamond Business Unit for Kinik Company's CMP Conditioner business in Taiwan, managing their R&D, manufacturing, sales and marketing efforts. Previously, he also worked in PVD/CVD diamond coating technology, decorative coating, and polycrystalline diamond tool applications.
Wey has spent 12 years in the semiconductor industry, and has more than 10 issued patents. He has a BA in Materials Science and Engineering from NCKU and MS in Materials Science and Engineering from NTU as well as EMBA in Taiwan.
Paul Lefevre is responsible for NexPlanar's technology including product development and CMP application activities.
Most recently, Paul was director of engineering at SDC Material, which developed equipment for manufacturing advanced nanoparticles, and prior to that he was VP of Engineering and Operations at innoPad, a start-up developer and manufacturer of CMP. Paul was also CMP Business Development Manager at Fujimi over a five-year period in which its CMP business experienced multi-fold growth. Earlier, he worked for ten years at IBM in different process engineering roles in plasma deposition, photolithographic mask and CMP. While with IBM, Paul was assigned to Sematech for two years as copper CMP project manager.
Paul has a MS in Engineering Technologies from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts et Metiers in Paris France. He has also been issued 10 CMP patents and has published 40 papers on semiconductor technologies.
Bob Kerprich is responsible for process engineering and process development activities at NexPlanar and has spent two decades in manufacturing and engineering roles. Prior to joining Nexplanar, Bob was Site and Operations Manager for Fujifilm Electronic Materials and Engineering Manager for Arch Chemicals. He also rose through the engineering organization at Eastman Kodak and became a six-sigma black belt. Bob’s Kodak roles included technical support, process and product development, and international sales support for protective films used in the Liquid Crystal Display industry.
Bob has a BS in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University and an MS in Computer Integrated Manufacturing from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Mark Ignatowicz is NexPlanar’s Vice President of Operations in Hillsboro, OR and Hopkins, MN.
Prior to joining NexPlanar, Mark spent 14 years with JSR Microelectronics where he successfully ramped their Sunnyvale manufacturing facility and managed its operations. Before that, Mark was a plant manager for PQ Corporation in Berkeley, California and a process engineer and production manager for Sandoz Corporation.
Mark holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University.
Jim Bucholtz is responsible for all quality systems and continuous improvement activities at NexPlanar. He has over 30 years of semiconductor experience working in wafer fabs, backend assembly and first-tier semiconductor supply chain.
Prior to joining Nexplanar, Jim was the VP of Quality at ATMI, prior to this Jim was responsible for fab quality at Cypress Semiconductor and previous to that operations management for Intel, AMD and Texas Instruments. Jim has a BS in Industrial Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
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