Management Bios

Chris Bryson, CEO joined Exxelis in March 2005. Chris has responsibility for leading the team at Exxelis. Chris has 16 years experience in sales, marketing & engineering experience in the optoelectronics market. Chris was recently a co-founder and VP Marketing at Phyworks Ltd, a fabless semiconductor supplier. Prior to Phyworks, Chris was a marketing manager at Microcosm Communications, sold to Conexant Systems in 2000. Other experience includes Ascom Telecommunications Ltd, and several years at GEC-Marconi, researching novel optical components and systems. Chris has an honours degree in Applied Physics & Electronics at Heriot-Watt University and a Master’s Degree in Marketing from Bristol Business School.

Dr Navin Suyal, CTO: was a co-founder of Terahertz Photonics before founding Exxelis Limited. At Terahertz, Navin was responsible for the development of Truemode polymer technology and a groundbreaking sol-gel based silica on silicon technology. Navin is a leading scientist in optical materials with over 30 publications and a number of patents submitted in this area. As well as considerable research and development experience, Navin has optical fiber production experience through 3 years in a start-up company. Navin holds a Master of Technology degree in Materials Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and a Dr. Ing. degree from the Institute for New Materials, Saarbruecken, Germany.

Willy Tsai, VP Business Development - Asia: has worked for several years in the flat panel display industry, most recently as CEO / Co-founder of Celera Technologies in Taiwan, supplying LCD modules into mainland China. Prior to that, he was a VP of Hannstar Inc, running the LCD module business unit. Willy has had previous marketing and engineering roles at a Fabless IC company and TSMC.

Chairman – Gary Steele: Exxelis also has access to experience and contacts in the venture capital community through its Angel Investor, Gary Steele. Gary is CEO and founder of Nanotech Ltd (www.nanosemi.com) and has made investments in a number of small companies. He was founder and CEO of Microcosm Communications Ltd which sold to Conexant Systems Inc for £120M in January 2000.