Speakers

Rizwan Ahmed is the Sr. Director of Product Marketing at SanDisk, Corp. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley where he majored in electrical engineering, nuclear engineering, and computer science, Rizwan attended Stanford University before he went on to earn his MBA at The Wharton School of Business. He has held various positions at SanDisk in product management, product development, and product marketing where he helped identify gaps in the global product portfolio and drove the development of product and technology roadmaps. Rizwan's main focus now centers around formulating go-to-market strategies, as well as managing his team to drive product positioning and develop new business opportunities. Rizwan currently resides in the Bay Area with his wife and two children.

Topic: As SSD transitions from early adopters to mainstream, we observe different emphasis on SSD attributes in PC segments such as performance notebooks, ultrathin notebooks, mainstream computing, productivity tablets, and cost conscious cloud and other network connected computing devices. To substantiate this discussion, we will go over the tradeoffs that SSD provides in dynamic and enhanced user experience, lower power, lower cost and smaller form factor.

Dr. Andreas Schlapka is Director of the Personal Computing Segment in the DRAM solutions group at Micron Technology. Andreas joined Micron in 2009 and is responsible for the worldwide management of strategic and operational activities for the PC market segment. Prior to Micron, Andreas was the Head of Global Product Marketing for PC Memory at Qimonda AG, and also served in marketing management roles at Infineon AG.

Andreas holds a doctorate degree in Surface Science from the Technical University of Munich, Germany and a master's degree in Thin Film Physics from the University of York, Great Britain. Andreas is currently based in Boise, Idaho and enjoys spending time traveling, skiing, and other outdoor activities.

Topic: The recent proliferation of Ultrathin client devices has resulted in a diverse mix of form factor, architecture, performance and design. In addition to the traditional laptop and tablet form factors, we're now seeing devices that convert from notebooks to tablets, and tablets that act as notebooks when attached to a keyboard. And it doesn't stop there; with components that enable it, Ultrathin client devices are going to continue to get smaller, lighter, more intelligent, and last longer on a single charge.

Because of the broad nature of the Ultrathin segment, a variety of DRAM solutions have emerged to support these applications, balancing power consumption, performance, density and form factor. This track will highlight the benefits of each of the DRAM solutions targeted for the Ultrathin client segment, enabling you to choose the solution that best supports the requirements of your end products.

Mr. YS Chia leads the hard drive sales operation for the expansive Asia-Pacific region for WD, as vice president and general manager of APAC Sales. He contributes a wealth of hard drive industry and sales management experience to WD's sales engagement in the fast-growing region.

Mr. Chia has served WD as sales leader of the APAC region since 2006, prior to which he was senior sales director. During his tenure with WD, sales in APAC have grown from $884 million (29% of the company's global revenue) in fiscal year 2004 to more than $7.2 billion (58% of revenue) in fiscal year 2012. Prior to joining WD in 2004, Mr. Chia held sales and engineering positions with Seagate.

Mr. Chia holds a bachelor's degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Nanyang Technological Institute Singapore.

Avril Wu , Senior Manager at DRAMeXchange, is in charge of DRAM industry market analysis, with focus on upstream wafer suppliers, DRAM makers, module packaging and testing industries.

Before joining DRAMeXchange, she served at AsusTek and department of strategic marketing at SK Hynix .

She received her Master of Internal Management Degree (2006) from Portland State University. She is currently attending the GMBA program at the National Taiwan University.

Sean Yang is NAND Flash Assistant Vice President at DRAMeXchange. His research mainly bases on the demand side of NAND Flash, covering hardware devices from mobile PC, tablet PC, smartphone and other consumer electronics.

He worked at international IC design firm at Hsing-Chu Science Park as an investor relationship administrator and a finance administrator before joining DRAMeXchange. Mr. Yang received his MBA degree from University of California, Riverside in 2007.