Management Team
Wen C. Hsu, Ph.D, President and Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder
Wen Hsu brings to Qpixel more than 20 years of semiconductor industry experience, specializing in MPEG encoder and decoder chips. Educated as an engineer, Hsu has dedicated his career to developing advancements and innovations in video compression technologies for such applications as video CD, DVD players, and video conferencing systems. This video industry veteran has successfully managed business strategy, engineering and business development for companies including Pulsent, Polycom, Oak Technology, C-Cube Microsystems, Cypress Semiconductors and General Electric.
Hsu has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to turn technical innovation and fresh ideas into revenue-generating products in the market. After joining Pulsent as vice president of engineering, he successfully reinforced the Series C funding efforts with R&D and product development divisions of major Japanese consumer electronics companies in business and development collaboration relationships. He proceeded to build the R&D and chip design team for product development of the world’s first working object based compression technology. As vice president of IC business at Polycom, Hsu was responsible for integrating Polycom’s audio and video products to conform to IP-based broadband business and residential customers’ requirements, forging a major market opportunity for the company.
Starting at Oak Technology as the director of engineering, Hsu led the development of all imaging products, and went on to become general manager and vice president of the CD/DVD business unit, developing video CD and DVD player turnkey solutions that generated substantial product revenue growth.
At C-Cube he managed the architecture and product definition group. At Cypress Semiconductors he was the lead engineer of the Cypress and Sun Microsystems joint development team of CY601 SPARC Integer Chip. His initial chip development position was with General Electric where he worked on the floating point processor and connection machine router chips.
Wen served as assistant professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma from 1982 to 1984. He obtained both a Ph.D. and master’s degree in electrical engineering from Michigan State University.
Howard Bailey, Chief Financial Officer
Howard has recently joined Qpixel in the role of CFO, bringing to the company extensive experience with VC and private equity, the IPO process and M&A transactions, particularly with global fabless semiconductor companies.
As the CFO of Occam Networks after it merged with a public company ANI in 2002, Howard successfully put into place a significantly improved financial planning strategy for the company. At C-Cube Microsystems as a Senior VP and CFO, Howard made major changes in the effectiveness of his organization and then participated in selling C-Cube to LSI. As the CFO at QED, he effectively transitioned the company from an engineering design house to a full manufacturing company, and together with the CEO, he took QED public in 2000 and then sold it to PMC-Sierra for $2 billion. As the CFO at Photon Dynamics, he helped launch its IPO in 1996. Howard has also held various key roles in finance, in companies such as Intel, Sierra Semiconductor (now PMC-Sierra) and Sprint.
Howard holds a BS in Economics from the University of Maryland and an MBA in Finance from the University of Utah.
Kourosh Amiri, Vice President, Marketing
Kourosh Amiri brings to Qpixel 15 years of industry experience in the semiconductor and communications/video markets and a strong expertise in DSP and telecommunications technologies. A well-rounded marketing executive with experience in senior management, Amiri has led teams of technologists as well as professionals in sales, marketing and business development in such specialties as voice and speech processing, video compression standards and IP communications protocols. With a solid understanding of market deployment, he has a proven track record in defining and delivering products to markets in such areas as surveillance, video conferencing, IP Telephony and digital home entertainment (digital TVs, set-top boxes and DVR/PVRs.) Amiri most recently comes to Qpixel from Cradle Technologies, where he was responsible for all aspects of marketing, establishing Cradle as a leader in multi-core DSP technology. He also held senior marketing positions at Freescale Semiconductors (formerly Motorola SPS) and 8x8.
Kourosh holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s of science degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Winston Chen, Vice President, Global Sales
Winston Chen brings over 20 years of semiconductor experience to Qpixel. He leads Qpixel’s global sales organization to support the company’s growth in its customer base and revenue stream, by leveraging his expertise and industry relationships. His most recent role was Vice President of Strategic Sales, at AMD (ATI). Prior to AMD / ATI, he held leadership positions in sales, marketing and engineering with TriTech Microelectronics, Trident Microsystems, TriQuint Semiconductor. He began his career as an integrated circuit designer with Monolithic Memories (acquired by AMD).
Throughout his career, Winston has been recognized for his achievements in building relationships and “win-win” successes with customers in consumer electronics and personal computer industries. He received “DTV Sales of the Year” awards from 2004 to 2007, as well as the “ATI Award of Excellence” for NA PC OEM, and led his company to receive “Supplier of the Year” awards from several industry giants. He is also co-author of a US patent.
Winston earned an MBA from Santa Clara University, as well as MS and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles
Tiee-Shan Tsai, Vice President, Hardware Engineering
Tiee-Shan Tsai has a proven track record of 20 years of semiconductor experience in engineering design and management. Prior to Qpixel Technology, Tiee-Shan served at the engineering director level responsible for the methodology in managing the storage area network (SAN) logic design and verification at Rasvia. During his work at Oak Technology, Tiee-Shan was instrumental in the lead and design of MPEG decoder ICs for DVD/VCD players, successfully leading the team from design to production. Before joining Oak Technology, Tiee-Shan worked at ATI designing the Pentium and Pentium Pro chip set with AGP to interface to ATI graphic chips.
Tiee-Shan Tsai started his career as an ASIC designer. With his proactive working attitude, Tiee-Shan gained in-depth experience in leading VLSI engineering teams from architecture to full chip development to final production, and establishing design methodologies for system verification and validation. Tiee-Shan’s vast experience in semiconductor design, state-of-the-art methodologies and fast design cycles, will continue to drive Qpixel’s success in bringing customers quickly to market.
Tiee-Shan holds a bachelor's degree from National Taiwan University and a master degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Jian Zhou, Vice President, Embedded Software Engineering
Jian Zhou has over 12 years of experience in management and design of embedded systems and video and audio firmware, from companies such as iCompression/Conexant, DiviCom/C-cube, Oak Technology and Toshiba America MRI. Jian holds a key engineering role at Qpixel, leading the company’s development and implementation of the embedded software running on Qpixel’s hardware. Prior to joining Qpixel, he held a firmware manager position at Conexant as the lead design and architect of MPEG codec chips’ firmware, which successfully enabled top customers such as Sony, Toshiba, Sanyo and HP to market with PC encoders, DVD recorders, PVRs and set-top box products. He has an impressive array of experience in DSP firmware, embedded system design, AV encoders, and interactive TV solutions, which garnered big name players in their markets.
Jian has a BS in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, an MSEE and an MS in Physics & Astronomy from the University of Kentucky.
Dr. Edward Duh, Vice President, System Engineering
Dr. Edward Duh has twelve years experience in multimedia system design and five years experience in multimedia signal processing research, with an established record of successful delivery of key designs to market from companies such as Oak Technology and Cheertek Technology. At Oak Technology, Dr. Duh led various engineering groups in designing products such as a 2D/3D graphics card, CD-ROM drive, VCD player, digital set-top box, DVD player, consumer audio-CD recorder, color inkjet MFP, CD-RW burning software, VCD encoding software and CD-RW drive. At Cheertek, Dr. Duh managed the entire DVD product development, from initially building up a DVD servo team to completing four generations of DVD servo products. Since Dr. Duh joined Qpixel in July 2005, he has started and grown the System Engineering team and continues to lead all the hardware and software engineers in this division.
Edward holds a Bachelors in Computer Engineering from the National Chiao-Tung University in Taiwan, and a Masters and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National Taiwan University in Taiwan.
Laurie Dahlgren, Vice President, Human Resources & Administration
Laurie Dahlgren has over 20 years of effective leadership experience in human resources and business operations, as well as prominent involvement in technology and communications. She brings to Qpixel a tremendous array of skills in building teams, particularly in start-ups and creating performance-based organizations with positive and communicative cultures. In her most recent executive role as Vice President, Business Operations at CAM Systems, she proved her leadership by successfully managing the business through major growth and change. She has worked extensively in human resources, finance, strategic planning, marketing, and project management in her various roles as a managing partner or executive in companies such as Xpede, Cottonwood Communications, Mostly Media and Swanson Russell Associates.
Laurie studied Business Administration at Doane College and University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
