Leadership

Management Team

Founder, President & CEO: S. K. (KG) Ganapathi, Ph.D.

KG founded Fidelica Microsystems in 1999 and continues to lead the company as President & CEO.

KG comes to Fidelica from Applied Magnetics, where he was responsible for all R&D, engineering, customer qualification, and prototype operations as Vice President and General Manager of the San Jose division.

Prior to Applied Magnetics, KG was on the founding team of DAS Devices, Inc. (which was later merged with Applied) and served in various engineering and management capacities with Read-Rite Corporation.

He holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Ohio State University, started his career as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research at the University of California, San Diego, and continues to bring his thin film experience to Fidelica today.

Vice President of Marketing and Business Development: Robert Allen

Robert is responsible for sales, marketing, and business development at Fidelica, working closely with Fidelica's growing customer base.

He has 16 years of senior-level business development and marketing experience with global high-tech corporations and Internet start-ups.

Most recently, Robert worked in business development for Sun Microsystems. Prior to his work at Sun, Robert was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Voice Works, where he was responsible for negotiating and managing key strategic relationships with high profile customers, including Intuit, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, and identifying marketing requirements and sales strategies.

Prior to Voice Works, Robert held senior posts at SkyDesk, Inc. where he was V.P. of Business Development, and at Gigatek Memory Systems, where he was V.P. of Marketing and Sales.

Chief Technical Officer: Keith DeConde, Ph.D.

Keith provides the technical vision for Fidelica, architecting the future of Fidelica's fingerprint sensor technologies.

Keith came to Fidelica Microsystems from Moog, Inc., where he was Manager of the Motion Systems Division. There, he was responsible for engineering, operations and program management related to the design and manufacture of high performance motion control systems.

Prior to Moog, Keith was President and Chief Operating Officer at Schaeffer Magnetics Inc., Manufacturing and Engineering Manager/Senior Process Engineer at Applied Magnetics Corporation, Senior Staff Engineer at Perkin-Elmer Corporation, and Co-founder and Vice-President at Rincon Scientific Corporation.

Before entering the commercial space, Keith was an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton University.

Keith earned his undergraduate and doctorate in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley and is a member of the American Physical Society, IEEE, SPIE, and AIAA.

He is the author of more than 20 publications in low-temperature physics and NIR instrumentation.

Vice President, Sensor Engineering: Sanjiv Kapoor

Sanjiv is responsible for translating the roadmap of sensor technology into reliable products using high volume production technologies.

He came to Fidelica from Vitex Systems where, as the Director of Flexible Glass Development, he ran the pilot production of substrates for flexible displays and flexible solar cells using low cost roll-to-roll processing.

Prior to Vitex, Sanjiv was Director of Technology Development at WJ Communications.  He led the development and production of high frequency semiconductor products for telecommunications applications. In the past, Sanjiv also developed high density plasma processes for Silicon microelectronics at Watkins Johnson, and worked on roll-to-roll processing at Southwall Technologies.

He holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.S. in Physics from Northern Illinois University.

He is a member of the APS, AVS, and SVC,  and has authored 12 publications.

Vice President of Strategic Relationships: Ramesh Yadava

Ramesh maintains strong vendor relationships, manages logistics, and facilitates human resources within Fidelica.

He joined Fidelica after serving as Director of Program Management for Castlewood Systems. Prior to that, Ramesh co-founded Comport Corporation, which designed and manufactured 3.5" hard disk drives, and was acquired by Samsung in 1990.

Before Comport, Ramesh was founder and President of Omek Flexible Disk Drive, which was acquired by Satya Electronics in India. He has also held management positions at Quantum, Read-Rite and Iomega.

Ramesh received a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Bihar Institute of Technology, and holds a Master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Santa Clara.

He is also a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneur Group (TIE).