Derek Kuhn
PRESIDENT & CEO
Derek Kuhn is President & CEO of HaiLa Technologies. Derek is a high-tech executive with more than twenty years of international experience. Before joining HaiLa he worked as a strategic advisor and consultant to companies in Canada and abroad, including ML for IoT focused Acerta, embedded computing focused Arcane Software and he was advisor to the CTO of Panasonic. Prior to this he was the president of Sciemetric Instruments, an IIOT company (sold in 2018), as well as Senior Vice President of Blackberry’s IOT business unit, and VP of sales and marketing for QNX Software Systems and for Blackberry Technology Solutions. Prior to Blackberry Derek held multiple senior roles at Alcatel-Lucent, including VP Emerging Technology in the office of the CTO where he received the company's 2010 CEO Award. Derek also conceived and led the ng Connect Program, a multi-industry initiative dedicated to the development and rapid deployment of next-generation broadband services based on Long Term Evolution (LTE). From 2003 to 2006, Derek served as Chair of the Broadband Content Delivery Forum, which focused on content streaming over broadband for the content community. He also sat as a board member of the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center from 2008 to 2010 and was on the Board of Directors for the Automotive Parts Manufacturer’s Association from 2012 to 2016 and again from 2019 to 2020. In 2005, Derek was granted a Top Forty Under 40 award by the Ottawa Business Journal. Derek holds a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Ramzy Metwalli
CFO
Mr. Metwalli brings over 25 years of financial executive experience to HaiLa. He is a board-certified CPA, CMA with experience in a wide range of technical industries from biocosmetics to lighting and videoconferencing equipment manufacturing. He has served as Chief Financial Officer to both private and public companies, assisting in numerous key milestones including fundraising and M&A transactions. Prior to joining HaiLa, Mr. Metwalli held the position of CFO and GM at Zorah Biocosmetics. Mr. Metwalli received his BAC in accounting from HEC Montreal.
Vytas Kezys
CHief scientist
Vytas Kezys is a seasoned technical strategist and recognized leader in mobile wireless. His career focuses on leveraging a broad technical background and concept-to-product experience to develop leading wireless solutions. He pioneered work in array signal processing including early development of MU-MIMO and has demonstrated expertise in a wide range of fields including Wi-Fi, RF propagation, statistical signal processing, indoor navigation and sensor fusion/SLAM. Prior to working with HaiLa as Chief Scientist, he was Director of Advanced Connectivity at Blackberry where he developed and launched their first Wi-Fi enabled handhelds and drove the adoption of various connectivity technologies. Vytas was the Founder and President of TalariCom where he led the development of cost effective smart antenna technologies. He was Principal Research Engineer at the Communications Research Laboratory, McMaster University, focusing on array signal processing, radar and smart antennas. Vytas has held numerous consulting positions and is an inventor on over 30 patents. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from McMaster University.
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Patricia Bower
VP, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Patricia Bower is a Product Manager and Marketing strategist with over fifteen years of experience in semiconductor system-on-chip products for wireless and wireline communications applications. Patricia was a Product Manager and Product Line Manager at Fujitsu Semiconductor for 18 years and worked in Portfolio Marketing at Ciena Corporation prior to joining HaiLa. She brings to HaiLa additional experience in communications systems and network architectures, along with an understanding of the trends driving rapid evolution at the network edge including the impact of IoT proliferation. Patricia also has a background in wafer process engineering and materials analysis.
Patricia holds a B.A from Boston University and a B.Eng in Chemical Engineering from McGill University.
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Nelson Costa
VP ENGINEERING
Nelson is a seasoned technical leader with extensive experience in wireless communications. During his graduate studies at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, he helped build and deploy the world’s first narrowband MIMO channel sounder, working alongside pioneers of MIMO. He later developed one of the first wideband MIMO channel sounders and created new wideband MIMO channel models from various measurement campaigns.
After earning his Ph.D., Nelson worked at a radar technology startup, helping grow the company from concept to production. At BlackBerry, he contributed to the tape-out of their first RFIC and developed algorithms related to 4G/LTE and spectrum sensing. At Cognitive Systems, he taped out another RFIC and developed applications for 4G/LTE base station monitoring and spectrum analytics for their IoT platform.
Most recently, Nelson managed Peraso’s Software Development, Systems Engineering, and Mass Production. Peraso's chipsets and hardware modules enable multi-gigabit wireless communications in the 60 GHz band and are used in hundreds of thousands of devices worldwide.
Nelson holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from McMaster University and a B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ottawa, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.