Mohamad Krounbi Senior VP Engineering, Grandis

Grandis, Inc., in spin transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM), has appointed Mohamad Krounbi as senior vice president of engineering.

 Drawing on more than 25 years of experience in the magnetic storage industry, including executive and senior management roles at Hitachi GST, Western Digital, Read-Rite and IBM, Krounbi will be responsible for all STT-RAM technology and product development at Grandis and for ensuring that the company’s licensees incorporate the best technology and processes as they bring their STT-RAM products to market.

"We are delighted to welcome Mohamad Krounbi to Grandis," stated Farhad Tabrizi, president and CEO of Grandis. "He has spent the majority of his career in executive positions in Fortune 500 companies, building first-rate teams and delivering world-class products. His track record is unsurpassed and I know he will make an exceptional leader of our engineering team. He will bring added discipline to our magnetic materials and process development activities, which in turn will greatly benefit the product schedules of our customers."

"STT-RAM is an exciting technology that has been pioneered by Grandis and has the potential of serving a great segment of the memory market," said Mohamad Krounbi. "It is the only solid-state memory technology that is non-volatile, fast, low power and scalable, making it the leading memory solution of the future. I am very impressed with the management and engineering teams at Grandis, and look forward to adding a focused, product oriented discipline to the company’s development. Product development and prototype qualifications combined with advanced materials development for future scalability are the essential ingredients for taking a new technology to market."

Prior to joining Grandis, Krounbi was General Manager and Vice President of Engineering at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, where he was responsible for worldwide wafer manufacturing, product design and process development. He led the development and ramp of the first perpendicular magnetic recording head and Hitachi’s magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) read head that enabled the world’s first terabyte server product. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Wafer Operations and Process Development at Read-Rite Corporation and Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Western Digital. Earlier in his career, he spent 19 years at IBM where he was Director of Head Development and member of the team that developed the world’s first magneto-resistive (MR) recording head product.

He holds over 40 patents in magnetic storage, head design and process technology and has received numerous awards throughout his career, including election to the IBM Academy of Technology in 1995 and corporate recognition from Hitachi for the launch of its first perpendicular magnetic recording product in 2006.

He holds a B.S. degree in Physics from Hagazian College, Beirut, Lebanon, and an M.S. degree in Physics from San Jose State University.