Gary Steele, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board

Gary has a degree in Electronics from the University of Southampton, which pioneered research into Optoelectronics & Fiberoptic communications in the UK. Following 10 years in the ASIC industry, Gary was co-founder & CEO of the UK's first Fabless chip Company, Acapella Ltd., in 1990. Acapella successfully introduced the use of mixed-signal CMOS into single-fiber communications links, and was sold to Semtech of the US.

In 1995 Gary co-founded and led Microcosm Communications Ltd., with a focus this time on mainstream dual-fiber links. Again pioneering the use of low-cost CMOS, Microcosm sold its 155Mbps, 622Mbps and 1.25Gbps chipsets to virtually every Fiberoptic Module OEM in the world. Following 2 Venture Capital rounds, in 1998 and 1999, the Company was sold to Conexant Systems Inc. of the US for approx. $200m, netting the original investors around a 20x return.

After 2 years of retirement Gary was eager to begin a new challenge, and co-founded Nanotech Semiconductor Ltd. in 2003 with several ex-Microcosm-ites.

David began his career with ST Microelectronics in 1986 as Sales Engineer and later joined LSI Logic as Key Account Manager. In 1998 David joined Philips Semiconductors as Global Key Account Manager, Alcatel and in 2000, he moved to San Jose, California to lead the Networking Sales & Marketing team and later the Business Development activity for Mobile & Personal Applications across the Americas. His next assignment was in Taipei, Taiwan as ODM Business Director. In this role, he successfully managed the engagement with the targeted ODMs that serve Philips Semiconductors' key OEMs in Communication and Consumer applications.

David graduated from INSA Lyon in France with an Engineering degree in Physics and Semiconductor Materials.

David joined Nanotech in October 2007.

Brian has 21 years experience in the semiconductor industry having worked for many of the industry's big names such as Texas Instruments, ST Microelectronics, Motorola and Conexant, after its acquisition of Microcosm Communications. He was also VP Operations at Phyworks for 2 years.

During these 21 years he has worked on TTL, Linear, Graphics, Transputer, Microcontroller and PMD products destined for consumer, datacomm, telecomm and automotive markets.

As employee number 6 at Microcosm he took the company into volume production implementing all the necessary mechanisms to move the company from design only into a supplier of quality high volume product. His responsibilities included supply chain management, test development, product engineering and Quality Assurance.

Once Microcosm was acquired by Conexant he was appointed Director of Test and Product Engineering for the ICON business unit where he was responsible for a team of more than 50 test and product engineers in both the UK and California working on integrated circuits for optical networks.

As VP Operations Brian's responsibilities include Product Evaluation, Product Engineering, Test Development, Supply Chain Management and Quality Assurance.

Brian joined Nanotech in July of 2004.

Alan Trainor, VP Engineering

Alan has nearly 20 years experience in the semiconductor industry, working both in Europe and North America.  He has a very strong product focus and has a number of patents for his work in analogue, mixed signal and RF IC design.

He started his career at Nortel Networks where for over 10 years he worked on and then managed many IC and system developments for optical and RF products for the telecommunications industry. Optical components included both ‘PMD' and ‘SERDES' functions, ranging from sub-1Gbps through to 10 and 40Gbps.

Before joining Nanotech, Alan was Senior Director of Engineering at SiGe Semiconductor.  At SiGe he was responsible for a number of design teams developing ICs and front-end modules for GPS radio receivers and WLAN/WiMAX power amplifiers for computing, entertainment devices and cell phones using a number of different silicon and GaAs technologies with multiple ‘fabs.'  In the early part of his time with SiGe, Alan also started the optical IC product line which was later sold to Gennum Corp.  During his 7 years with SiGe, Alan led IC developments that resulted in over 350 million products being sold.

Alan holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree with Honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He joined Nanotech in June 2009.