Webcast: Research Commercialization & Exit: The Story of Helic’s acquisition by Ansys

10dec12:00 pm12:30 pmWebcast: Research Commercialization & Exit: The Story of Helic’s acquisition by Ansys

Event Details

The video recording of the event can be found here.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

9:00 – 9:30 am (San Francisco)
12:00 – 12:30 pm (Boston/New York)
19:00 – 19:30 (Athens/Nicosia)

  • Yorgos Koutsoyannopoulos , Co-Founder/Former CEO, Helic
  • Vic Kulkarni , Vice President, Marketing & Chief Strategist, Ansys Semiconductor BU
  • Moderated by Dora Varvarigou, NTUA Professor (Electrical Engineering and
    Computer Science) and Chairwoman of the Board of the Water Utility in Athens

Greece has pushed through the first wave of startups in IT, enabled by low barriers to entry, and now is shifting toward larger opportunities in deep tech. Commercializing university research offers the potential for greater returns, as demonstrated by top US universities, but the path is longer and less clear. Building a strong business from core technology is a massive challenge; and driving it to exit is even harder. Yorgos Koutsoyannopoulos, Co-Founder/Former CEO of Helic will discuss its formation out of the National Technical University of Athens to address the issue of electromagnetic crosstalk caused by closer proximity of high-frequency circuits. Vic Kulkarni, Vice President at Ansys, will discuss their reasons for acquiring Helic and expanding its Research and Development center in Athens, with a stated goal of increasing employment over 2-3 years from 50 to 200, mostly scientists and engineers.

Yorgos Koutsoyannopoulos, Helic

Dr. Yorgos Koutsoyannopoulos is Vice President of R&D at Ansys, Inc., the global leader of pervasive simulation technologies, member of S&P500 and Nasdaq-100. Based in San Jose, California, Yorgos is in charge of Ansys global semiconductor electromagnetic solutions, developed by a world-class group of scientists in Athens. Prior to Ansys and since 2000, Yorgos led as CEO Helic, Inc., a simulation software company that won as customers 15 out of the top 20 global semiconductor players for multiple years. Helic was a pioneer high-tech startup, the first to raise venture-capital financing in Greece, successfully acquired by Ansys in January 2019. Yorgos earned both his diploma and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the NTUA in 1995 and 1999 respectively and has attended executive courses in Harvard and London Business Schools in leadership and marketing.

Vic Kulkarni, Ansys Semiconductor BU

Vic Kulkarni is Vice President, Strategy, Ansys Electronics & Semiconductor Business Unit, San Jose. CA. Vic is responsible for steering the business, technology, go-to-market and product strategy, connecting the dots from chip-package-system design solutions with ANSYS multi-physics simulation technology to address challenges faced by multiple verticals, including 5G, AI, HPC, hardware security, Aero-Defense, mobile and autonomous. He drives strategic customer executive relationships and mergers-acquisitions with Ansys leadership team.

Prior to merging with Ansys, Vic was a co-founder, President and CEO of Sequence Design focused on EDA solutions for power and energy efficient chip designs. He has held engineering and senior management positions in a number of leading companies in the Silicon Valley over several years.

Vic has a MSEE in Solid State Electronics from University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. In 2007 the University honored him with the “Distinguished Alumnus Award. He has a B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

Theodora Varvarigou Moderator: Dora Varvarigou, NTUA Professor (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Chairwoman of the Board of the Water Utility in Athens

Theodora Varvarigou is a professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). She received the B. Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from NTUA in 1988, the MS degrees in Electrical Engineering (1989) and in Computer Science (1991) from Stanford University, California. She received her Ph.D. degree from Stanford University as well in 1991. She has worked as a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs, USA and as an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece. Prof. Varvarigou has great experience in cutting edge technologies, such as Cloud computing, multimedia content processing, semantic web, social networking technologies etc. She has published more than 200 papers in leading international journals, conferences and books. She has participated and co-ordinated numerous EC projects. From 2008-2012, she held the chair of the postgraduate program “Engineering Economic Systems” of NTUA. Since June 2019 she was elected as the Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of EYDAP.

 

Hellenic Innovation Network, with the support of the Greek Consulate of Boston and MIT Enterprise Forum Greece, was created to empower technology-based startups from Greece and Cyprus with a bridge to the U.S. through pitching and networking opportunities. Our dedicated group from the tech startup ecosystems in Boston and Athens organizes events twice per year to educate the Greek diaspora about Greek startup activity, and to offer Greek entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch and network in the US. Our CEO group meets monthly to discuss common challenges. Our online platform allows for virtual connections of our members in between events, so please register at hellenic.org to become part of our community.

 

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Time

December 10, 2020 12:00 pm - 12:30 pm(GMT-05:00)

Location

Online

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