Charlotte, N.C., Nov. 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKTS), a manufacturer of patented bulk acoustic wave (BAW) high-band RF filters for mobile and other wireless applications, announced today it has appointed Rohan Houlden as its Chief Product Officer.
Mr. Houlden, who joined Akoustis in September 2016 as Vice President of Engineering, has been a key contributor to the commercialization of Akoustis’ XBAW filter technology. Mr. Houlden oversees the device engineering and product design teams as well as the testing, characterization and mechanical design of all Akoustis products.
In his new role as Chief Product Officer, he will oversee the development and release of all wireless products for the Company’s target market segments including WiFi, 4G/5G infrastructure and mobile devices, military, defense and other markets.
Jeff Shealy, Founder and CEO of Akoustis, commented, “Since joining Akoustis, Rohan has proved to be a key management addition for the Company. He has leveraged his RF industry expertise to lead the development of high-performance RF filter products using the Company’s patented XBAW technology.” Mr. Shealy continued, “In his new role, he will focus on expanding our RF filter product portfolio for our growing number of customer engagements.”
Mr. Houlden led the development of the Company’s AKF-1938, a 3.8 GHz BAW filter for the radar market, which Akoustis began shipping in the September quarter. In addition, his engineering team developed the AKF-1252 BAW filter, the industry’s first commercial 5.2 GHz BAW RF filter for tri-band WiFi applications. The Company is currently sampling the AKF-1252 filter with more than 12 potential customers, with primary interest from OEM, ODM, SoC and RF module manufacturers.
Mr. Houlden also led the development of the Company’s most recent product introductions, the AKF-1125D and the AKF-1125U; BAW filter solutions designed specifically for 4G/LTE wireless infrastructure applications. The Company announced in October it began sampling filters to a new Tier-1 OEM customer.
About Rohan Houlden
Prior to joining Akoustis, Mr. Houlden spent 29 years in design engineering, business development and management in the RF and wireless industry. From 2015-2016, he was the General Manager of the Connectivity Business Unit at Qorvo, Inc. (formerly RF Micro Devices), responsible for customer premise equipment (CPE) WiFi, Smart Energy and Automotive product lines, where he managed the product development and production ramp of custom front end modules (FEMs) and BAW filters for leading enterprise, retail OEMs and automotive suppliers. Prior to the merger between RF Micro Devices, Inc. and TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc., Mr. Houlden was General Manager of the Wireless Connectivity Business Unit at RF Micro Devices for 7 years, responsible for WiFi and Smart Energy product lines. In addition, he also managed the product development and production ramp of custom FEMs to all leading wireless OEMs - including Tier-1 and Tier-2 smartphone OEMs, as well as key OEMs involved in the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT). Mr. Houlden holds an MBA from University of Iowa, a Masters of Science from Iowa State University and a Bachelor of Science from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia).
About Akoustis Technologies, Inc.
Akoustis® (http://www.akoustis.com) is a high-tech BAW RF filter solutions company that is pioneering next-generation materials science and MEMS wafer manufacturing to address the market requirements for improved RF filters - targeting higher bandwidth, higher operating frequencies and higher output power compared to incumbent polycrystalline BAW technology deployed today. The Company utilizes its proprietary XBAW manufacturing process to produce bulk acoustic wave RF filters for mobile and other wireless markets, which facilitate signal acquisition and accelerate band performance between the antenna and digital back end. Superior performance is driven by the significant advances of high-purity, single-crystal and associated piezoelectric materials and the resonator-filter process technology which drives electro-mechanical coupling and translates to wide filter bandwidth.
Akoustis plans to service the fast growing multi-billion-dollar RF filter market using its integrated design and manufacturing (IDM) business model. The Company owns and operates a 120,000 sq. ft. ISO-9001:2015 certified commercial wafer-manufacturing facility located in Canandaigua, NY, which includes a class 100 / class 1000 cleanroom facility - tooled for 150-mm diameter wafers - for the design, development, fabrication and packaging of RF filters, MEMS and other semiconductor devices. Akoustis Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in the Piedmont technology corridor near Charlotte, North Carolina.
