I’m delighted to report that Dr. Roawen Chen, Senior Vice Present of global operations at Qualcomm, has accepted our invitation to deliver the keynote talk at The ConFab, on Monday June 23^rd. As previously announced, Dr. Gary Patton, Vice President of IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill, New York, will deliver the keynote on the second day, on Tuesday June 24^th. I’m thrilled to have these two visionaries speak to The ConFab audience.

In his role at Qualcomm, Roawen oversees the worldwide operations and supply chain, silicon and package technology, quality/reliability, and procurement functions for the Qualcomm semiconductor business. He has overall responsibility for driving the global integrated fabless strategy and execution.

Roawen is an experienced leader in all aspects of semiconductor operations and supply chain management with a solid background in leading large-scale fabless operations. In addition to his strong technical depth, he has proven experience in building close supplier and vendor relationships and executing to support customer demand and product development. Prior to Qualcomm, Roawen was Vice President of Manufacturing Operations at Marvell Semiconductor in Santa Clara, California. During his more than 12 years at Marvell, Roawen held a variety of leadership roles, including Vice President and General Manager of the Communications and Computing business unit and Vice President and General Manager of the Connectivity business unit. He has also served in management roles in Marvell’s Foundry Operations and Manufacturing Technology groups.

Prior to Marvell, Roawen held technical positions at TSMC-USA and Intel. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Physics from National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan, a master’s degree in Materials Science from the University of California, San Diego and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

The ConFab will be held June 22-25 at The Encore at The Wynn in Las Vegas.