Ralph Whitten

Ralph has led the development and commercialization of complex MEMS and integrated circuit products for over 30 years. He has led the engineering and development efforts at four successful start-ups in the MEMS field including Silicon Light Machines, Aptix Corporation, FormFactor Inc, and Nanogen, Inc.

At Silicon Light Machines, Ralph was Director of Engineering and was responsible for the commercialization of the Grating Light Valve technology licensed from Stanford University. This work was partially funded by DARPA and resulted in a very successful commercial company that was acquired by Cypress Semiconductor. At Aptix Corporation, Ralph was a founder and Director of Technology Development. These efforts lead to commercial products including programmable printed circuit boards and system emulation products.

At Form Factor, Ralph was responsible for developing a commercial, wafer-level, burn-in system, winning a “Best New Technology” award on introduction. At Nanogen, Inc, Ralph served as Senior Director of Biosensor Research and Development and was responsible for commercializing cantilever-based biosensor products.

Ralph holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently holds 23 patents in the field.