The University of Texas at Austin

About TIE

Meet the Leadership Team

Leadership

John Schreck

John Schreck

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TIE Chief Executive Officer, John Schreck is the former senior vice president (retired) of DRAM Engineering at Micron Technology and in December 2022 became the CEO of the Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE). In his role as SVP of DRAM Engineering, Mr. Schreck was responsible for Micron’s international team of design and product engineering with responsibilities including new technology development and high bandwidth memory (HBM) engineering. Mr. Schreck serves on the University of Texas at Austin’s Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering External Advisory Board and the Cockrell School of Engineering Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni. He holds a bachelor’s in electrical and electronics engineering from UT Austin and a master’s in electrical and electronics engineering from Rice University.  

Dr. S.V. Sreenivasan

Dr. S.V. Sreenivasan

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Dr. S.V. Sreenivasan founded the Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE) in 2021 and currently serves as the CTO. He is also the Cockrell Family Regents Endowed Chair #7 in Engineering and Assoc. VP of Semiconductor Manufacturing at UT Austin. He is an expert in semiconductor equipment & process technologies. He has previously served as PI/co-PI of the $40M NSF funded NASCENT Center, PI of a $36M NIST ATP program, and PI or co-PI of several DARPA programs. He founded a UT-Austin spin out, Molecular Imprints, Inc. (MII), to commercialize nanoimprint lithography. MII’s semiconductor business was acquired by Canon Corporation, and MII’s display division was acquired by Magic Leap, Inc. Sreenivasan is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He earned a Bachelor of Technology from the National Institute of Technology at Trichy (India), and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.

Dave Gino

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TIE Chief Financial Officer, Dave Gino is a technology and semiconductor industry veteran with over 35 years of experience in senior executive roles. Dave came to Austin in 1996 as part of the IPO spin out of Dupont Photomask (DPI) from Dupont. His experience ranges from large public companies to small startups with a very broad background raising critical growth capital including two initial public offerings, a number of venture-backed equity and debt financings, product and IP licensing, and creatively structured commercial partner funding arrangements.

He is also an active angel investor and mentor to early-stage startups in Austin.

Roy Meade

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TIE Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships, Roy Meade is an expert in semiconductor manufacturing, silicon photonics, research and development, and business management from over 25 years of high technology experience spanning start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.  He holds BME and MSME degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Duke University.  He has also served as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on DARPA and ARPA-e programs.

Tim Cowles

Tim Cowles

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TIE Executive Director of Product Development Engineering, Tim Cowles is a semiconductor industry veteran with over 33 years of experience in engineering and engineering management roles. Tim joined TIE in November 2023 from Microsoft where he was Director for Azure’s Memory and Storage HW division. Prior to Microsoft, he spent 29 years at Micron Technology where he held various Director of Engineering roles working on projects across all life-cycle stages from ideation, design/architecture, prototyping and development, validation and test, and customer qualification. Mr. Cowles holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from Washington State University, an MBA from Boise State University, and is the author on over 150 patents.

Larry Dunn

Dr. Larry Dunn

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TIE Co-founder and Senior Director of Business Development, Dr. Larry Dunn is an expert in technical business development, consortium management, and technology transfer.  During TIE’s startup phase he served as the lead for TIE’s innovation ecosystem and workforce development programs.  He also serves as Asst. Director of the NSF-funded Nanomanufacturing Systems Center (NASCENT) at UT Austin.  Prior to joining UT, Larry was helped to build Atonometrics from an early-stage startup to a leading manufacturer of test and measurement equipment for the photovoltaic industry. Larry earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin, for which he was awarded the Ben Streetman Prize for outstanding research in electronic and photonic materials and devices, and his B.A. in physics from Hendrix College. Larry has co-authored 15 peer reviewed and popular scientific articles and is an inventor of 11 issued U.S. patents.

Shrawan Singhal

Dr. Shrawan Singhal

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TIE Senior Director of Process Technology, Dr. Shrawan Singhal has deep experience developing and maintaining novel nanofabrication processes including creating processes of record and understanding yield and reliability. He has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin where he developed reduced order models with large-scale computation towards the investigation of novel multi-scale mechanics in nanomanufacturing processes over centimeter-scale areas, specifically related to ink jetting and nanoimprint lithography. He also has experience managing cleanroom facilities and in directing a team of research personnel. He has previously held a position as Process Technology Director of the NASCENT Center at UT Austin. He has co-authored several journal articles and conference presentations in the fields of nanoscale fabrication process development, as well as modeling and experimental validation of novel fabrication and optical metrology processes.

Patrick Meyer

Patrick Meyer

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TIE Senior Director of Fab and Facility Operations, Patrick Meyer has over twenty-five years’ experience in semiconductor R&D facility management, equipment mode management, factory automation, and electronic-and-physical security of IP, from SEMATECH, an R&D consortium, through Novati Technologies, a DMEA Trusted Foundry, and beyond.  He spent the last fifteen years providing commercial services incorporating sixty elements from the periodic table into 2D, 2.5D and 3D integrated products for aerospace and defense, bioelectronics and non-traditional semiconductor markets.

His business process designs, operations protocols, and management focused on the specific needs of a facility running thousands of short loops alongside thousands of very low volume products, often incorporating elements such as Ag, Au, Nb, Pd, Pt and Sc, as well as building on heteroepitaxial substrates, and extending CMOS wafers sourced from large foundries.

 

Executive Board

Dr. Meghali Chopra

Dr. Meghali Chopra

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Dr. Meghali Chopra is CEO and co-founder of SandBox Semiconductor. She is responsible for SandBox’s vision and strategy and oversees the development of SandBox’s software products and technologies.

Dr. Chopra has a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering with Honors from Stanford University and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in Chemical Engineering. Her doctoral work focused on the use of Bayesian optimization for plasma-based etch and deposition semiconductor processes. Dr. Chopra was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research fellow and was elected to the Forbes 30 under 30 Science category in 2019. She is an industry expert with publications in leading peer-reviewed journals and patents in the areas of machine learning and AI-enabled optimization of semiconductor manufacturing processes and metrology.

Ken Joyce

Ken Joyce

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Ken Joyce is a semiconductor industry assembly, packaging, and test veteran. He currently serves as an independent executive advisor to Brewer Science, Inc., a global provider of materials science solutions to the microelectronics industry. In 2022 he was appointed an inaugural member of the Industrial Advisory Committee created by the CHIPS Act to advise the federal government on microelectronics. He is also a Board Member of Arieca, Inc., an Advanced Materials Start-up. Previously, Ken spent 15 years with Amkor Technology, Inc., a leading OSAT provider of semiconductor packaging design, assembly, packaging, and test services where he held senior management positions including, CFO, COO, and President and CEO. During his tenure at Amkor, he led his team in forming J-Devices, Inc, Japan’s largest OSAT company. Throughout his career, he has served on the Board of Directors of a number of Public, Private and Not-For-Profit organizations, including the Global Semiconductor Alliance, “GSA.” He has been designated a Board Leadership Fellow by the National Association of Corporate Directors.

jeannie leavitt

Major General (ret) Jeannie Leavitt

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Major General (ret) Jeannie Leavitt currently serves as a Distinguished National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas. Her Air Force career spans more than 31 years and includes serving as Chief of Safety for the Air Force and Space Force, where she developed, directed, and evaluated all aviation, ground, weapons, space and system mishap prevention and nuclear surety. She also developed and directed all risk management courses for the Air Force and Space Force.

In addition to commanding the Air Force Safety Center, General Leavitt also commanded Air Force Recruiting Service, the 57th Wing and the 4th Fighter Wing. She held a variety of other positions, including Director of Operations and Communications for Air Education and Training Command, Principal Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Fellow, detailed to the Central Intelligence Agency. She is an experienced command pilot with more than 3,000 hours, including 300+ hours in combat. She is a graduate and former F-15E instructor pilot at the United States Air Force Weapons School.

General Leavitt earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. Additional graduate degrees she earned include a Master of Business Administration from Auburn University, a Master of Military Operational Art and Science from Air University, and a Master of National Security Strategy from the National War College, National Defense University. General Leavitt is also a member of the Engineering Advisory Board at the Cockrell School of Engineering, the University of Texas at Austin, and a principal at Pallas Advisors.

Babak Sabi

Dr. Babak Sabi

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Dr. Babak Sabi is a Senior Vice President at Intel Corporation, From 2009 to 2023 Babak was Senior Vice President and the General Manager of Assembly & Test Technology Development (ATTD) at Intel Corporation. Babak was responsible for the company’s packaging, assembly, and test process technology development.

Babak joined Intel in 1984. Prior to leading ATTD, he oversaw Intel’s Corporate Quality Network from 2002 to 2009 where he led product reliability, customer satisfaction and quality business practices.

Babak received his Ph.D. in solid state electronics from Ohio State University in 1984. He has authored ten papers on reliability physics and has received five Intel Achievement Awards. He currently holds two patents.

John Schreck

John Schreck

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John Schreck is the former senior vice president (retired) of DRAM Engineering at Micron Technology and in December, 2023 became the CEO of the Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE). In his role as SVP of DRAM Engineering, Mr. Schreck was responsible for Micron’s international team of design and product engineering with responsibilities including new technology development and high bandwidth memory (HBM) engineering. Mr. Schreck serves on the University of Texas at Austin’s Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering External Advisory Board and the Cockrell School of Engineering Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni. He holds a bachelor’s in electrical and electronics engineering from UT Austin and a master’s in electrical and electronics engineering from Rice University.  

Dr. S.V. Sreenivasan

Dr. S.V. Sreenivasan

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Dr. S.V. Sreenivasan founded the Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE) in 2021 and currently serves as the CTO of TIE. He is also the Cockrell Family Regents Endowed Chair #7 in Engineering and Assoc. VP of Semiconductor Manufacturing at UT Austin. He is an expert in semiconductor equipment & process technologies. He has previously served as PI/co-PI of the $40M NSF funded NASCENT Center, PI of a $36M NIST ATP program, and PI or co-PI of several DARPA programs. He founded a UT-Austin spin out, Molecular Imprints, Inc. (MII), to commercialize nanoimprint lithography. MII’s semiconductor business was acquired by Canon Corporation, and MII’s display division was acquired by Magic Leap, Inc. Sreenivasan is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He earned a Bachelor of Technology from the National Institute of Technology at Trichy (India), and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.

Dr. Daniel Jaffe

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Dr. Daniel Jaffe is the Vice President for Research and Jane and Roland Blumberg Professor in the Department of Astronomy.  As Vice President, he oversees the University’s research infrastructure and several of its interdisciplinary centers and institutes including the Applied Research Laboratory, the Oden Institute, the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and the Energy Institute.  His office also works with faculty to develop major interdisciplinary research proposals and manages the University’s research grand challenge program.

Prof. Jaffe received his BA and PhD from Harvard University and held positions at the University of Chicago and UC Berkeley before joining the UT faculty.  Jaffe’s research encompasses device development, instrumentation, and observations geared toward understanding how stars and planetary systems form and evolve.  His group constructs silicon diffractive optics using precision lithography and currently has devices on instruments for the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as several ground-based instruments.  His team’s IGRINS spectrograph operates at McDonald Observatory and the team is now designing an instrument for the Giant Magellan Telescope.  Prof. Jaffe’s astronomical research employs high resolution infrared spectroscopy to look at the properties of protostars and of the disks around them that are forming planets. Prof. Jaffe has been awarded Harvard’s Bart J. Bok prize, a Humboldt Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship.  He took up his position as Vice President for Research in January, 2016 and served as UT’s Executive Vice President and Provost ad interim in 2020 and 2021.

 

History

TIE was founded in April 2021 in response to growing industry interest in advanced heterogeneous integration and its role as the technology driver in semiconductor manufacturing.

TIE grew out of the Nanomanufacturing Systems Center (NASCENT) at UT Austin, an Engineering Research Center funded by the NSF from 2012-2023 to enable novel process innovation by developing semiconductor equipment integrated with real-time metrology and advanced data analytics.

NASCENT’s leadership team including S.V. Sreenivasan, Larry Dunn and Shrawan Singhal leveraged their long-term R&D engagements with NASCENT member companies in the defense and commercial semiconductor industry to establish TIE’s vision.

TIE was able to garner the support of UT Austin leadership and key industry partners, leading to $112 M of state funding in 2022, shortly before the passage of the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act in August 2022.

TIE’s momentum continued to increase when John Schreck (UT Austin ECE Alum and former Micron Senior VP of DRAM Engineering) joined TIE as CEO in late 2022, and with the passage of the Texas CHIPS act in mid-2023 which allocated a further $440 M to TIE.