Board of Directors

Dr. Niel Ransom

Chairman of Teknovus, Former Alcatel CTO

Dr. Niel Ransom has played a strategic role in developing key technologies in the telecommunications industry for over 32 years. At Alcatel, he managed an organization encompassing corporate and product strategy, corporate research, R&D investment, mergers and acquisition (M&A) strategy, participation in venture funds, and patents and intellectual property. Recent M&A activities included the acquisition of TiMetra, Spatial Communications, eDial, PacketVideo, Thirdspace, iMagicTV, Right Vision, Telera, Aravox, WaterCove, and Native Networks. While at Alcatel, he also held various general management roles, including managing the Alcatel access and metro optical business in the U.S. Dr. Ransom joined Alcatel from BellSouth where he directed an organization responsible for expanding BellSouth’s offerings into PCS wireless, IP, video, and advanced intelligent networks. He began his career at Bell Labs where he managed an applied research organization that gave birth to a number of highly successful products in data and voice switching including the 5ESS system. Dr. Ransom has served as a member of the Technological Advisors Council of the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC). He is a co-author of Broadband Access Technologies, published by McGraw-Hill. Dr. Ransom holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, BSEE and MSEE degrees from Old Dominion University, and an Executive MBA from the University of Chicago.

Greg Caltabiano

President and CEO

Greg Caltabiano joined Teknovus from his position as President & COO of SOMA Networks, where he was responsible for corporate strategy and management of all business and technical functions, including sales, marketing, engineering, and manufacturing. Mr. Caltabiano was instrumental in securing multimillion dollar carrier contracts worldwide. Prior to SOMA, he served as Division Vice President & General Manager for Comverse Asia, building and managing Comverse’s 15 sales and support offices and four R&D centers. Mr. Caltabiano also held technical and management positions at IBM Microelectronics and Honeywell/Data Instruments. He accumulated more than 14 years of work in Japan and China. Mr. Caltabiano received his BSEE/CS Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University’s School of Engineering and his MBA from Stanford University, where he received a FLAS Fellowship. Mr. Caltabiano also completed post graduate and executive education at the Inter-University Center in Japan and INSEAD in France.

Michael J. Callahan

Retired Chairman, President and CEO of WSI

Mr. Michael Callahan has over 30 years of leadership within the semiconductor industry. Mr. Callahan is the retired Chairman, President, and CEO of Waferscale Integration, where during his ten-year career he successfully transformed the company from an EPROM and Flash EPROM memory manufacturer to a supplier of field-programmable peripheral integrated circuits. He directed the sale of Waferscale to ST Microelectronics, a leading semiconductor manufacturer. Prior to Waferscale, Mr. Callahan was the President of Monolithic Memories (MMI), which became a subsidiary of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); he then served as AMD’s Senior Vice President of Programmable Products. At Motorola Semiconductor, Mr. Callahan enjoyed a 16-year career in executive management positions, including R & D, linear products, and MECL products. He holds a B.S.E.E. from MIT.

Winston Fu

General Partner at U.S Venture Partners

Mr. Winston Fu is a general partner at USVP, where he enjoys helping entrepreneurs build teams to compete and win. Mr. Fu’s investments focus is on the application of technologies in areas such as renewable energy, environmentally sustainable products, and semiconductors (and areas related to semiconductors). He leads USVP’s activities in China.

Mr. Fu serves on the boards of Active-Semi International, CiraNova, CFX Battery, Maskless Lithography, Princeton Lightwave, Superprotonic and Teknovus. During the past decade, he also served on the boards of Alchemy (acquired by AMD in 2002), Brion Technologies (acquired by ASML in 2007), Clear Shape Technologies (acquired by Cadence in 2007) and New Focus (NUFO made its initial public offering in 2000 and was subsequently acquired by Bookham in 2004).

Mr. Fu joined USVP as an associate in 1997, following his selection as a Kauffman Fellow in Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship, and he became a General Partner in 2000. Prior to joining USVP, Mr. Fu served in technical and marketing roles at Vixel Corporation (NASDAQ: VIXL), which was acquired by Emulex (ELX) in 2003. As director of product marketing, he was responsible for developing new applications for the VCSEL device product line. Mr. Fu researched and developed technologies in semiconductors, lasers and superconductors at Stanford University, Sandia National Labs and MIT.

Mr. Fu earned a bachelor’s degree in Physics from MIT, a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where he was an Austin Scholar.

Tim Wilson

General Partner at Partech International

Mr. Tim Wilson joined Partech International in 2001 and focuses on communications and components investments. Between 1997 and 2001, Mr. Wilson was the Chief Marketing Officer for Digital Island, a Partech portfolio company. The company was acquired by Cable & Wireless in 2001 for $350M. Prior to Digital Island, Mr. Wilson was a General Manager at Lucent Technology where he led the international voice communications product management team (now Avaya) with P&L for product lines generating over $2B in annual sales and coauthored a VOIP related patent. Before Lucent, Mr. Wilson held a variety of senior management positions within AT&T (North America and Australia) and AT&T Bell Labs from 1983-1995.  Mr. Wilson's current portfolio companies include ARIO Data Networks, Discera, Invensense, Spudnik and Teknovus where he holds a board seat with each company.  He graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Bowdoin College receiving his undergraduate degree in Physics. He received his MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business where he was named a Fuqua Scholar.

Julie Kunstler

Founder of Portview Communications

Ms. Julie Kunstler has worked closely with rapidly growing companies; as an early employee at Paychex, a U.S.-based provider of payroll and benefits processing, and as a director of Intralinks, a New York-based Application Service Provider (ASP) that supplies secure digital workspaces to help enterprises and individuals communicate and collaborate. She currently serves as a director of Fiberzone Networks,Teknovus and Teranetics.

As Chief Operating Officer of HK Catalyst, Ms. Kunstler advised companies ranging from start-ups to global firms such as Siemens and ECI Telecom.

In addition to her operating experience, Ms. Kunstler spent six years in banking as an analyst for Citibank and then as Finance Manager at Chase Manhattan Bank. Ms. Kunstler earned a Bachelors degree magna cum laude from the University of Cincinnati and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Ms. Kunstler has taught courses on entrepreneurship and venture capital in the MBA program at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Jake Seid

Managing Director at Lightspeed Venture Partners

Mr. Jake Seid has over seven years of venture capital experience and has helped complete more than 20 investments at Lightspeed across mobile (Rhythm New Media, Icebreaker), Internet (Kosmix, TheFind, TutorVista, StyleHive), systems (Aerohive, Identity Engines), software (Personeta, Sailpoint, Skybox) and components (SiPort, Unity). Jake also co-leads Lightspeed's India initiative and the firm's involvement in the Lightspeed-Gemini Internet Lab. Prior to Lightspeed, Jake was a product line manager for Cisco Systems. He was responsible for launching and managing the industry's first DOCSIS-based cable modems and routers, which won "Best of Show" and "Best Networking Hardware" at Comdex '99. Jake was with Cisco's cable business unit, as it grew from a $1M to $1B annual revenue business.

Mr. Seid serves on the Board of the MIT-Stanford Venture Lab and the Advisory Board of Nexus India Capital, an India-focused venture capital firm. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and a MEng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Dr. Rex Naden

Teknovus Chairman Emeritus

Dr. Rex Naden’s career spans 30 years of successful leadership in the semiconductor industry, with 14 years dedicated to advanced communications products. He joined Teknovus as President & CEO in mid-2004. He was promoted to Chairman in December 2006 and became Chairman Emeritus in November 2007. He guided Teknovus to 25 carrier deployments and 14 design wins with world renowned equipment vendors. Prior to Teknovus, he served as Chief Operating Officer of Silicon Access Networks, where he successfully led the architecture, development, and manufacturing of the first commercially shipped 10Gb/s full duplex layer-four network processor chipset. Prior to this position, Dr. Naden served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Atheros Communications, where he helped establish the company as the world’s leader in 802.11a/b/g radio chip sets; the company completed a successful IPO in 2004. Prior to Atheros, Dr. Naden was the President and CEO for Stream Machine, where he led development of the leading consumer MPEG2 CODEC device; the company was successfully sold to Cirrus Logic. At VLSI Technology, he enjoyed a 13-year career, including President of VLSI Technology, KK (Japan) and Group Vice President for Communication Products. Dr. Naden began his career at Texas Instruments, where he spent 11 years in the Research and Consumer Products divisions. He holds ten patents and B.A, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rice University.