Management Team
Chris Adams, President & Chief Executive Officer
Ricardo Motta, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Imaging Systems
Justin Reyneri, Ph.D., Chief Scientist
Phil Holden, Vice President, Systems Engineering
Thomas Ayers, Vice President, Engineering
Dave Jensen, Vice President, Operations
John Monti, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development
Todd Rumaner, Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Chris Adams - President & Chief Executive Officer
Chris Adams has spent his career in the business of semiconductors for cable, satellite and terrestrial delivery of digital video and data. He joins Pixim from Tallwood Venture Capital, one of Pixim's investors, where he was an Executive-in-Residence. During his tenure at Tallwood, Adams was instrumental in driving the strategic plans for several portfolio companies and was the interim COO at Inphi, an IC company known for delivering the best signal integrity for processing high-speed digital data in computing and communications systems.
Before Tallwood, Adams was vice president and general manager for the set-top box and cable modem business at LSI Logic. During that time, Adams played a key role in integrating C-Cube's set-top business into LSI. Prior to working at LSI, Adams spent five years at C-Cube Microsystems, as an executive in both marketing and engineering, building the set-top box business. Earlier, Adams was director of engineering at DiviCom and was involved in pioneering work on video servers and HDTV at HP.
Adams holds a bachelor's degree in the sciences from the University of British Columbia and a master's degree in electrical engineering form Stanford University. He was the chairman of the DSMCC subcommittee of MPEG and holds many patents in the digital video and signal processing field.
Ricardo Motta - Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Imaging Systems
Ricardo Motta is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Vice President of Imaging Systems for Pixim Inc, in Mountain View, CA. Pixim is the world's largest supplier of high dynamic range imaging systems to the retail, financial services, gaming, education, and transportation industries. Pixim's Digital Pixel System® (DPS) ultra-wide dynamic range technology, a breakthrough in imaging technology, delivers unprecedented image quality in all lighting conditions.
Ricardo joined Pixim in early 2000 as the first executive. At Pixim, he has led the development of the company core technology, including the high-dynamic range video sensor and the companion DSP, and now focuses on next generation chipset products and image capture systems.
Prior to Pixim, Ricardo was Chief Imaging Architect at Hewlett Packard (HP) Imaging Group, where he led company-wide initiatives in the emerging image business and R&D efforts in the development of portable, low cost, digital photography products.
Ricardo is well known in the industry for his pioneering work at HP Labs that laid the foundation for the many successful products in color printing, color scanning, color copying, and digital photography. He has worked on and off as a professional photographer for over 30 years, and his work has been exhibited and published widely.
Ricardo is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), with BSc and MSc degrees in Photographic and Imaging Science. In 1998, he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus by RIT College of Science. He is fluent in four languages and holds over 20 patents in the areas of optics, imaging, and color.
Justin Reyneri, Ph.D. - Chief Scientist
Justin Reyneri joined Pixim in 2000 as Director of Software, and has been a key driver of Pixim’s Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) software, sensor and ASIC technology, especially in the area of WDR image acquisition.
Justin has over 25 years experience in electrical engineering and software design, including embedded system design, DSP, ASIC and FPGA architectures, and EDA tool development. His experience includes over 20 years in entrepreneurial ventures.
Prior to Pixim, Justin spent 5 years at Synopsys as an R&D Director responsible for physical design tool development. He also directed library and ASIC methodology development at Silicon Architects, a company he co-founded in 1990.
Earlier experience includes FPGA and FPGA tool development at Actel, research at LSI Logic and consulting work in secure satellite communications for the Department of Energy (DOE).
Dr. Reyneri attended Stanford University , where he earned a B.S. degree in Mathematics, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering.
Phil Holden - Vice President, Systems Engineering
As Vice President of Systems Engineering for Pixim, Phil Holden brings 25 years of design and implementation experience in the use of semiconductors and software for a variety of digital applications, with particular emphasis on digital video. Mr. Holden is also responsible for customer support and applications engineering at Pixim, creating a multi-disciplinary team focused on getting camera manufacturers to market quickly and effectively.
Prior to joining Pixim, Mr. Holden served as Director of Applications for C-Cube Microsystems, a leader in digital video technologies that was acquired by LSI Logic. Mr. Holden is a native of the UK and came to California to work for Stag Microsystems. He started MSD3 in 1992 to build test equipment for PCMCIA products and moved the company and his expertise to Vadem Inc. Mr. Holden worked as Director of Applications Engineering at Chromatic Research, a media processor company, before joining C-Cube.
A member of IEEE, Mr. Holden is a published writer with articles in EE Times, product development and IEEE publications. He has Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from Sussex Universities in the UK.
Thomas Ayers - Vice President, Engineering
Thomas Ayers has over 15 years experience in engineering development for video solutions applied in cable modems, set-top box devices, and video compression head-end equipment.
Prior to Pixim, Ayers was Vice President, Engineering at Broadlogic where he lead the development of a wideband receiver used in the world's fastest cable modem (300Mbps) which defined key features in the DOCSIS30 cable modem standard. Also at BroadLogic, Ayers developed product concepts and lead technical interaction with cable MSOs and leading systems companies such as CISCO, SA, Bigband and others resulting in two rounds of funding by top tier MSOs: TWC and Comcast.
Ayers was Vice President, Hardware Engineering for Believe, Inc., a solutions company providing next generation technology for advanced 3D graphics. Ayers built the engineering team from the ground up, including an offshore development facility.
Ayers has held various management and engineering positions within C-Cube Microsystems, Inc., now part of LSI Logic, Inc. While at C-Cube, he created a new business unit with budgetary, hiring, and engineering management responsibility for set-top cable modems and analog video products, launching the successful 21xx line of products. Ayers was also responsible for managing the initial development of the highly integrated ZiVA-5 DVD product, and running systems hardware and VLSI development teams spanning five generations of set-top silicon including the AViA line of products.
Prior to C-Cube Microsystems, Ayers was instrumental in the success of startup DiviCom, Inc., now part of Harmonic, Inc. While there, he participated in development of the world's first real time MPEG2 encoder products, as well as the world's first MPEG2 transport demultiplexer and DVB descrambler. Ayers was also responsible for developing three generations of set-top silicon products as well as two commercially deployed set-top boxes including manufacturing line startups for SAGEM and Zenith.
Ayers earned an MSEE and BSEE from the University of New York at Buffalo
Dave Jensen - Vice President, Operations
Dave Jensen is Pixim's Vice President of Operations. He brings over 25 years of engineering and operations experience to Pixim, with a strong background in the areas of process engineering, foundry relationships, semiconductor assembly, and test. Dave has managed the delivery of a diverse assortment of products, including graphics processors, microprocessors, and high-performance communications chips.
Prior to joining Pixim, Dave was VP of Operations at Discera bringing their MEMS chip into production, where he was responsible for process, product, and reliability engineering. Before Discera, Dave held VP of Operations positions at BitBlitz (now part of Intersil) and Transmeta where he had responsibility for a broad range of operational departments including product and test engineering, MIS, and purchasing.
Earlier in his career Dave managed foundry operations at NVidia Corporation and held various engineering and operations positions at National Semiconductor.
Dave holds Bachelor’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University.
John Monti - Vice President, Marketing and Business Development
John Monti is Pixim's vice president of marketing and business development. Drawing on experience in the fields of semiconductor applications, marketing and system-on-chip solutions, Mr. Monti brings to Pixim a unique blend of customer awareness and technological expertise. Mr. Monti is a published writer and speaker at such forums as Video/Imaging Design Line, Security Systems News, WinHEC, EE Times, and the Interagency Biometrics Conference. He is the holder of two United States patents.
Prior to joining Pixim, he served as a vice president of marketing for ATI Technology Inc., the world’s second-largest computer graphics company. Working in the Integrated Products Division at ATI, Mr. Monti was responsible for integrated core logic chipsets and microprocessor products for multimedia applications.
Between 1995 and 1998, Mr. Monti worked for Sunnyvale, CA-based Chromatic Research, where he was hired as director of product marketing. In that role, he helped define Chromatic’s two highest volume media processor solutions. The company ultimately shipped more than 1.5 million units to such clients as Compaq, Gateway and Toshiba. Mr. Monti’s success at Chromatic culminated in promotion to vice president of marketing. At that level, Mr. Monti also helped facilitate the sale of Chromatic to ATI Inc. in 1998.
Before joining Chromatic, Mr. Monti was director of marketing for Symphony Laboratories, a small semiconductor company, which defined and marketed chipsets for PC motherboards. Customers included Apple, IBM, NexGen and Motorola.
In 1987, Mr. Monti began his career in the semiconductor industry at Advanced Micro Devices, where he held a series of management and marketing positions. His contributions helped secure large-scale contracts with Apple, Compaq, Sun, Digital, Hewlett-Packard and others.
Mr. Monti has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Yale University and a master’s degree in engineering management from Santa Clara University.
Todd Rumaner - Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Todd Rumaner is an eighteen-year sales and marketing veteran, with experience in technologies related to digital imaging, database management systems, banking and 3D semiconductor packaging and memory subsystems.
Before joining Pixim, Todd was vice president of worldwide sales at Staktek, responsible for the planning, development and rollout of an international sales team servicing the DRAM and FLASH markets. He was instrumental in executing the company's expansion into the international consumer electronics market servicing NAND FLASH manufacturers.
Prior to Staktek, Todd was COO at ArcSoft, Inc., a digital imaging and video-related solutions company, where he was responsible for sales, marketing and execution of corporate strategies. As one of the first employees he helped build the company into a three hundred-employee organization with offices in the United States, China, Europe, Japan and Taiwan. Earlier, Todd managed sales at ElektroGrafiks, a VAR for advanced cable TV and high-end imaging systems.
Todd attended Northeastern University and is a member of the Photographic Manufacturers and Distributors Association. He has participated as a panelist in numerous industry trade shows and roundtable discussions