Dr. Naveed Sherwani is a world-renowned semiconductor expert, entrepreneur, and leader in chip design. He holds a PhD in computer engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and his career spans academia, industry leadership, and entrepreneurship. Early in his career, he served as a professor at Western Michigan University before joining Intel in 1994, where he focused on design automation for complex chips.

Dr. Sherwani has founded or co-founded numerous influential semiconductor companies, including Open-Silicon, Brite Semiconductor, PeerNova, and Rapid Silicon. His ventures have been instrumental in advancing semiconductor technology, raising over $1 billion in funding across these projects. A key figure in the RISC-V movement, he has led the growth of companies like SiFive and SemiFive, contributing to the global rise of RISC-V technology.

In addition to his leadership roles in the private sector, Dr. Sherwani is the Chairman of the National Semiconductor Hub of the Kingdom, where he works on fostering innovation and semiconductor advancements at a national level. He continues to influence the global semiconductor landscape through his contributions to the RISC-V ecosystem and domain-specific FPGA innovations at Rapid Silicon.

Dr. Sherwani has authored multiple textbooks, including the widely-used “Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation,” and has published over 125 technical papers. His leadership in both academia and the industry has earned him numerous accolades, including the Sitara-e-Quaid-e-Azam awarded by the President of Pakistan in 2019.

Koen De Backer is the Corporate Vice President of smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence at Micron Technology. He is responsible for driving Micron’s smart manufacturing initiatives and digital operations including capabilities with IoT, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, cognitive computing and machine learning to enhance our business, global operations and product development.

Prior to joining Micron, Koen led large-scale operations projects for more than a decade to help clients reduce inefficiencies and achieve excellence in manufacturing, procurement, supply chain and support functions. Most recently, Koen was a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he steered the semiconductor consulting practice in Southeast Asia and was one of the firm’s leading experts on applying artificial intelligence and automation techniques across operations and support functions such as finance, human resources and procurement. Additionally, Koen consulted with high-tech global clients while working at Deloitte Consulting, Altran Europe and CSC.

Koen holds a master’s degree in business administration from INSEAD and master’s degrees in both industrial management and electromechanical engineering from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.