• ABOUT US •
• MANAGEMENT •
• BOARD •
• CAREERS

SPARQ Management

Praveen Jain, CEO

Dr. Praveen Jain PhD, FIEEE, is a world renowned expert in power electronics and highly successful serial entrepreneur. He was founder of CHiL Semiconductor in Tewksbury, MA, USA, which was recently acquired by International Rectifier for $75M. He has considerable experience in working with industry in the field of power electronics (Astec, ABB, Ballard Power, CHiL Semiconductor, Crompton Greaves, Canadian Aeronautics, General Electric, Intel and Nortel Networks).

Dr. Jain is a recipient of many awards including Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), Engineering Medal of the Professional Engineers of Ontario and the IEEE Newell Award - the highest field award in power electronics. He is also a holder of the prestigious Canada Research Chair in Power Electronics at Queen's University in Canada.

 

 

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Randall North, COO

Randall North, P Eng, is a senior executive with significant experience in management, operations, product development and marketing of advanced semiconductor, optical and software based technologies. Before joining SPARQ he was with a number of organizations, including at GSI Lumonics, Nortel and JDS Uniphase. He was general manager for the WavePrecision group of GSI Lumonics responsible for development, manufacturing, sales and marketing of precision optoelectronic components. At JDS he directed DWDM manufacturing operations, shipping over $1M daily of coupler based photonics components to customers worldwide. At Nortel he managed the laser diode optoelectronics manufacturing for shipment to Nortel customers in Paignton, England and Montreal, Canada.

 

 

 

 

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Paul Vickers, Chief Finance Officer

Paul Vickers, CA, CPA, is responsible for the finance functions of SPARQ, where he provides professional accounting and tax services for the company. He began his career with KPMG LLP, where he specialized in providing professional accounting services for the technology industry. For more than a decade he has applied his expertise to helping innovative technology companies grow, with responsibility for all of their accounting, taxation and financial reporting and controls, as well as monitoring licensing agreements, equity holdings and banking relationships. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario.

 

 

 

 

 

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Haibo Zhang, Vice President Engineering

Haibo Zhang (MASc) has over 25 years industrial experience for bringing power electronics products from the research stage to full-scale manufacturing. He was head of the Power Group at Cistel Technology Inc.; head of Power Electronics at Chippower Inc.; Senior Principal Engineer at CHiL Semiconductor Inc.; and Chief Engineer of Electrical Driving and Automation Control Research Group at Shanghai Research Institute of Electrical Automation. He received his BSE degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and his MASc degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Concordia University.

 

 

 

 

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Mary Anne Beaudette, Director, Communications

Mary Anne Beaudette (BA Guelph, BEd Queen’s) is director of communications at SPARQ Systems. Previously she worked for more than 15 years as a newspaper reporter and editor before joining Queen's University as manager of the institution's internal communications. Since 2001 she has focused on technology transfer communications, including news releases, website design and maintenance, media relations, events, corporate brand development and corporate publications. A key subset of this expertise is helping startup companies communicate their value proposition.

 

 

 

 

 

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