Atomica Leadership: Company Announces New CEO and Senior VP
PRESS RELEASE
Eric Sigler Named Chief Executive Officer; Ex-Illumina Exec Johan Denecke to Lead Operations
SANTA BARBARA (PRWEB) APRIL 15, 2021
Atomica, (formerly IMT) announces that Eric Sigler has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer. Additionally, Johan Denecke, who previously led manufacturing and quality at Illumina and Thermo Fisher, has joined Atomica as its new Senior Vice President of Operations. This completes the company’s rapid transformation initiative, which was launched with Cerium Technology’s lead investment in late 2018.
Eric Sigler joined Atomica in late 2018 as senior vice president of strategy and business development. In addition to his deep knowledge of the MEMS industry, he has worked in strategy, product management, M&A and venture capital for over 20 years. He was previously VP of corporate development, production management, and business development with Tessera Technologies. Eric was also a partner with Scale Venture Partners, where he led semiconductor investments. He started his career as a strategy consultant with Mercer Management Consulting. He holds a bachelor of business administration degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
“We are thrilled to have Eric serve as Atomica’s new Chief Executive Officer,” said Eldon Klaassen, Chairman of the Board. “He has an incredible passion for the promise of MEMS to empower the future and a clear vision to make Atomica one of the world’s premier MEMS technology companies.”
“As a venture investor in Atomica in the 2000s, I always felt the company had amazing potential to help solve the great problems of our time,” said Eric. “I am honored to assume leadership of Atomica and am resolved to realize its potential helping our customers successfully deliver their solutions for cell therapy, optical communications, autonomous vehicles, DNA sequencing, IoT sensing and many other important fields.”
New SVP of Operations
Johan Denecke also joins Atomica as its new Senior Vice President of Operations, where he now leads the quality, manufacturing, supply chain, and operations departments. He comes to Atomica from leading biotech company Illumina, where he was vice president of life cycle management and vice president of manufacturing. Prior to Illumina, he managed 300+ quality professionals as the VP of quality assurance of Thermo Fisher’s Life Sciences Division. Johan began his career at Allied Signal and Lockheed Martin driving lean manufacturing and Six Sigma transformations. Over the years, he has applied best–in–class operational practices as a consultant, most recently in the life science industry. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a certified lean production expert and a Six Sigma master black belt.
Eric regards Johan as a key player in taking Atomica to the next level: “He brings a diversity of experience in both the biomedical and advanced engineering fields. We are excited to leverage his decades of success leading and scaling manufacturing teams in both high growth and regulated industries.”
“I have a deep passion for creating life-changing technologies in aerospace, automotive and the life sciences. Atomica has an incredible future providing cutting-edge solutions for a similarly diverse set of applications and in industries that are rapidly growing,” said Johan. “I am energized by the opportunity to apply lean and Six Sigma to transform our operations and deliver world–class capabilities to our customers.”
Brian Maertz promoted to VP of Engineering
Rounding out the transformation of Atomica’s new leadership team is the promotion of Brian Maertz to lead Atomica’s development team as vice president of engineering. Maertz began at Atomica in 2018 as a technical program manager. Before joining Atomica, he was the principal process engineer at Freedom Photonics, where he improved the processes and performance of photonic devices including lasers, photonic integrated circuits and high-speed photodiodes.
Brian began his career at Intel as an integral member of the eNVM MRAM development team, a technology for which he holds eight patents. He also worked on a transistor technology node, from early development through product launch. He has a PhD in physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a bachelor of science in physics from the University of California at San Diego.
