Speakers

Joe Armstrong

President, 49North

David Bennett

CEO & Co-Founder, ai&

Tony Chan Carusone

Tech Executive, Qualcomm

Joe Costello

CEO, Inpho

Joe led Cadence Design Systems to be the number one EDA company in the world with revenues of nearly $1B, making it one of the 10 largest software companies in the world. In 1997, Chief Executive Magazine named Costello the top performing CEO of all publicly traded companies in North America. Costello has served on the boards of Oracle, Macromedia (Adobe), Mercury Interactive, and dozens of early technology companies. Joe is now leading Inpho to become the world leader in photonic chips for computing.

Erik Hadland

Director of Technology Policy, SIA

Erik Hadland is the Director of Technology Policy at the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), where he is responsible for the association’s research, development, and technology activities as well as its education and workforce development efforts. In this role, he works with the White House, Federal agencies, and Congress to inform policymakers about the needs and functions of the diverse segments of the semiconductor industry.

Wendy Hadwen

ADM, Policy-Industry Department of National Defence

Ms. Wendy Hadwen was appointed Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy-Industry) in October 2024. Prior to assuming her current duties, she was Communications Security Establishment Canada’s Deputy Chief responsible for Strategic Policy, Planning and Partnerships.

Previously she held executive positions at NRCan, at Treasury Board Secretariat, Ernst & Young, and the Security and Intelligence Secretariat of the Privy Council Office. Since starting in 1994 at Foreign Affairs working on rapid reaction capacity for international peacekeeping operations, she has spent her policy career almost entirely on peace and security issues including implementing the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines, establishing the counterterrorism capacity building program, and promoting non-proliferation and nuclear security.

Rafal Janik

COO, Xanadu

Rafal Janik is the Chief Operating Officer at Xanadu, where he leads the commercialization of Xanadu’s quantum computing technology. He has over 13 years of experience leading software and machine learning teams in both large enterprises and high growth startups to bring cutting edge technologies to market. Rafal works closely with national governments and large enterprises to develop quantum adoption strategies and policies.

Jim Keller

CEO, Tenstorrent

Jim Keller is CEO of Tenstorrent and a veteran hardware engineer. Prior to joining Tenstorrent, he served two years as Senior Vice President of Intel's Silicon Engineering Group. He has held roles as Tesla's Vice President of Autopilot and Low Voltage Hardware, Corporate Vice President and Chief Cores Architect at AMD, and Vice President of Engineering and Chief Architect at P.A. Semi, which was acquired by Apple Inc. Jim has led multiple successful silicon designs over the decades, from the DEC Alpha processors, to AMD K7/K8/K12, HyperTransport and the AMD Zen family, the Apple A4/A5 processors, and Tesla's self-driving car chip.

Alexey Kovsh

CEO and Co-founder, Alfalume Inc.

Jim Keller is CEO of Tenstorrent and a veteran hardware engineer. Prior to joining Tenstorrent, he served two years as Senior Vice President of Intel's Silicon Engineering Group. He has held roles as Tesla's Vice President of Autopilot and Low Voltage Hardware, Corporate Vice President and Chief Cores Architect at AMD, and Vice President of Engineering and Chief Architect at P.A. Semi, which was acquired by Apple Inc. Jim has led multiple successful silicon designs over the decades, from the DEC Alpha processors, to AMD K7/K8/K12, HyperTransport and the AMD Zen family, the Apple A4/A5 processors, and Tesla's self-driving car chip.

Niraj Mathur

Co-founder and CEO, Blumind

Niraj Mathur is the CEO and Co-Founder of Blumind, a Canadian semiconductor company developing ultra-low-power and highly performant analog compute semiconductors for always-on AI at the edge. Niraj has extensive experience navigating deep-tech commercialization and scaling hardware companies from early innovation through customer deployment. He frequently engages with industry, investors and policymakers on edge AI, energy-efficient computing, and the business realities of bringing breakthrough semiconductor technologies to market. Niraj holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from McGill University and an MBA from Cornell University.

Dr. Chuck Mattera

Founder and CEO, Avalanche Thinking

Dr. Vincent D. (Chuck) Mattera, Jr, is a distinguished leader in the laser technology, photonics, and advanced semiconductor materials industries. He recently retired as the Chair and CEO of Coherent Corp. (formerly II-VI Incorporated, whose name changed after the acquisition of Coherent), in which capacity he served from 2016 to 2024. Under his leadership during his Second Act of 20 years, the company experienced significant growth, diversification and transformation. It achieved new heights of market leadership, including by the strategic acquisitions of Finisar and Coherent, Inc. which substantially expanded II-VI's reach into lasers, photonics, compound semiconductors, and advanced semiconductor materials and optics. Today, the company underpins every major market inflection.

Kirk Ouellette

VP Global Strategy, STMicroelectronics

Kirk Ouellette is the Vice President of Corporate Strategy at STMicroelectronics. Previously, Kirk was heading ST's Digital Product Group for the Asia Pacific region, focusing on ASICs and advanced technologies projects with FDSOI, RFSOI, and Silicon Photonics. In this role, and as a board member of the SOI consortium, he helped drive the market adoption of the SOI technology ecosystem globally. He came to ST in the 2008 acquisition of Genesis Microchip, as the Canadian R&D Center Manager and TV Business Unit Director. At Genesis, he brought to market the world's first integrated single chip LCD TV controller in 2004 with TV brands such as Toshiba, Sony and LG. Earlier in his career, he was an Optical Device Researcher and Integrated Optics start-up founder, where he developed patents and published technical papers in the fields of electro-optic display devices and photonic waveguides.

Tony Pialis

EVP and GM, Data Center, Qualcomm

Tony Pialis is the Executive Vice President and General Manager, Data Center, for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. He is a veteran semiconductor executive with more than two decades of experience building foundational technologies for next-generation compute and connectivity. He was founder and CEO of Alphawave Semi, which was acquired by Qualcomm in December 2025. Prior to Alphawave Semi, Tony cofounded and led two other semiconductor companies. He began his career in 1999 as a founder of Snowbush Microelectronics, which grew into a leading provider of analog and mixed-signal IP and was later acquired by Gennum, later part of Semtech. In 2008, he founded V Semiconductor and served as President and CEO, delivering advanced 10Gb Ethernet and PCIe Gen3 IP adopted by top-tier semiconductor manufacturers.  Intel acquired the company in 2012. 

Cameron Schuler

Chief Commercialization Officer & VP Industry Innovation, Vector Institute

Cameron Schuler drives AI adoption across Canada’s enterprise landscape in his role as Vector Institute’s Chief Commercialization Officer and Vice President, Industry Innovation. Collaborating with research, industry, and government partners, Cameron works to turn AI breakthroughs into real-world progress and outcomes. Before joining Vector, Cameron served as Executive Director at Amii for eight years, leading one of the world’s top-ranked machine learning research groups. With over 20 years of executive experience including COO, CFO, and CEO roles across technology, life sciences, and energy sectors, Cameron brings deep expertise in both commercial and technical domains. He has founded multiple startups in medical devices, computer software and hardware. He is the Chair and Co-founder of PFM Scheduling Services and was Managing Director and Co-founder of Schuler Law Group, a boutique tax planning firm.

Sonya Shorey

President and CEO, Invest Ottawa

Sonya Shorey is president and CEO for Invest Ottawa, Bayview Yards and Area X.O. She is a strategy executive and management consultant with more than 22 years of leadership experience with private and public organizations. Sonya has expertise in regional, national and global technology and has worked with entrepreneurship, economic development and innovation-based organizations. She specializes in corporate and communications strategy development and execution. This includes investment strategies to secure new cash and in-kind contributions from public and private sources. Since 2005, Sonya has developed strategies for and led, authored or contributed significantly to successful multi-year funding proposals and initiatives valued at more than $203 million from municipal, provincial, federal and international governments.

Patrick Rundell

Senior Venture Investor, AMD

Paul Slaby

Managing Director, Canada's Semiconductor Council

Paul Slaby is a veteran semiconductor industry professional, and Managing Director of Canada’s Semiconductor Council (CSC). His semiconductor career started with a post-doc research position at Carleton University, followed by a decade as a semiconductor R&D manager with Nortel Semiconductor and BNR. Subsequently he founded and/or ran several successful high-tech ventures including ATMOS Corp, MicroSemiX, VoIPshield Systems, Kaben Wireless Silicon, Teslonix and others. Recently, he has been devoting his time in an advisory capacity to several emerging tech startups, as well as tech venture accelerators. Paul is on a mission to elevate Canada’s semiconductor industry to global prominence.

Duncan Stewart

Partner, Deep Tech Venture Fund, BDC

Duncan Stewart is an investment partner with the BDC Deep Tech Venture Fund, bringing extensive science and technology expertise from his years of work in both private and public sectors. He was Director then Director General of the NRC Canadian national lab Security and Disruptive Technologies research centre from 2010-2019, where he led a team of more than 100 research physicists and chemists working on disruptive quantum science and technology. Prior to NRC, Duncan spent a decade at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Silicon Valley, in the flagship Quantum Science Laboratory. He has authored 60+ technology patents and 40+ scientific papers with more than 20,000 citations, including the original memristor discovery.

Keith Strier

SVP, Global AI Markets, AMD

Marie-Josée Turgeon

CEO, C2MI

Marie-Josée Turgeon joined C2MI in 2016 as Vice-President, Business Development. She was promoted Vice-president of Operations and Deputy General Manager in 2018 and appointed Chief Executive Officer in 2022. For nearly 30 years, Marie-Josée has worked in the microelectronics manufacturing field, having worked for IBM Bromont where she held several positions over nearly 20 years. She pursued her career as plant manager for Varitron in Granby, where she was responsible for the complete on-site management of operations, human resources, and financial resources. Throughout her career, Marie-Josée has been and continues to be involved in the promotion of women in science through various activities, most recently those of the Chair for Women in Science and Engineering from the Université de Sherbrooke.

Velko Tzolov

Director General, Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC)

Dr. Velko Tzolov joined the NRC in 2010, and is currently the director general of the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre. Prior to this, Dr. Tzolov was Ottawa's regional director of the NRC's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP), managing a significant portfolio of small and medium-sized enterprises developing innovative technologies, and key IRAP innovation ecosystem initiatives. He was also an industrial technology advisor with IRAP, and a business development officer with the Energy, Mining and Environment portfolio.Between 1995 and 2010, Dr. Tzolov was the founder and senior-level executive of several Canadian technology firms such as: Optiwave Systems, Peleton Photonics Systems and Palladium 7 Corporation. During these years, he was involved in managing industrial technology development and commercialization. He was also very instrumental in major business transactions such as: securing venture capital / debt financing, mergers and acquisitions, and IP asset transactions.

Daniel Yum

Principal, Playground VC

Daniel Yum is a Principal at Playground Global where supports the General Partners with sourcing, technical due diligence, and portfolio company support with a particular focus on software, automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. He is also a software engineer and supports the portfolio companies through architecture reviews, engineering mentorship, interviews of key hires, and strategic analysis of the technology landscape.

Daniel came to Playground Global from Intel, where he played an integral role in building and shipping the first Intel Architecture-based Android Smartphone, for which he was recognized with an Intel Achievement Award. Prior to Intel, he was part of the team that built and proved out the feasibility of crosswind kite power generation at Makani Power – before it was acquired by Google/X Labs – where he was responsible for all the software, from embedded motor & flight controls to the ground station & visualization.

Claude Vachet

Managing Partner, Cycle Capital

Claude is Managing Partner at Cycle Capital – leading Deeptech venture capital investment platform with a ClimateTech angle, investing across North America and Europe in growth-stage companies enabling technologies driving energy efficiency - with an AUM of more than $700M. He brings 35 years of experience across operations, venture capital, and the management of venture capital portfolios focused on high-tech companies. Over the course of his career, he has built a solid track-record of investments, led large teams of investment professionals and has been involved in the execution of numerous exits, including GaN Systems which has been acquired by Infineon for $830M USD in 2023.

Andrej Zdravkovic

CSWO & SVP, G&E Software, AMD

Andrej Zdravkovic is senior vice president of GPU Technologies and Engineering (G&E) Software and Chief Software Officer, managing the global G&E Software team and driving AMD’s software development strategy and processes. With more than 30 years of industry experience and deep software expertise, Zdravkovic rejoined AMD in November 2015 as corporate vice president of Global Software Development. Since then, Andrej has delivered a clear software vision that drives differentiated features and supports critical customer programs as well as improved end-user ratings and performance of AMD Radeon software.

Prior to AMD, Zdravkovic was senior vice president at Giesecke & Devrient, leading worldwide Software Solutions from 2009-2015. Before Giesecke & Devrient, Andrej was senior director of software for graphics and multimedia, product integration, customer engineering and customer project management at AMD, which he joined in 1998, then known as ATI.

Meet the Speakers