Management Team

 

Prof Mike Underhill

Chairman and Research Director
Mike’s long industry career was mostly with Philips, where his major roles included Director of the Systems Division at Philips Research Laboratories, Redhill, and Technical Director at MEL, Crawley. For over 20 years, Mike has been an advisor to the Ministry of Defence in a variety of roles, centrally through the Defence Science Advisory Council, but also through QinetiQ (formerly DERA) and DSTL.  Mike has also enjoyed a long academic career, and has been associated with the University of Surrey for nearly 40 years.

 

Peter Hicks

Marketing Director
Peter’s early career included development of one of the earliest RISC processors at Sinclair, and supercomputer development at the French Advanced Computer Research Institute. While general manager of IP Solutions at ARM in 2002, he successfully introduced many new products including the PrimeXsys and PrimeCell IP range. Since 2002, Peter has held a portfolio of roles, started a fabless IC company, and has provided mentoring services with the London Technology Network.

 

Roger Maran

Director of Licensing
Starting as an in-house legal adviser for industrial and technical multinationals, Roger later promoted M&A and joint ventures in London and New York as a business development director. Before co-founding Toric, he practised as a business consultant, first at Scientific Generics and then at Maran & Co, undertaking a variety of assignments for various organisations in areas relating to the management and exploitation of intellectual property.

 

James Brodrick

CTO
James has held senior technical positions at Philips Medical Systems, Mitsubishi Electric, and LSI Logic, working in fields as diverse as medical imaging and DAB radio. For the last nine years his main activity has been in multimedia semiconductor applications, and both analogue and digital semiconductor IP. Prior to joining Toric, James was responsible for the European sales and marketing operations at Improv Systems Inc.

 

Ian Walsh

VP of Business Development

Ian joined Toric in February 2008. He brings in-depth experience in licensing complex designs into the SoC market. Until 2007, he was CEO of MnD Semiconductors, supplying design services for multiprocessor SoCs in broadband and multimedia applications. Earlier postings were as Sales and Marketing Director of the British arm of Westell Inc, a broadband CPE company; and as Technical Director of  MIPS Technologies, Europe, with responsibility for application specific MIPS processor enhancements and SoC development.  Earlier, he was in large companies, for example as Director, Strategic Business Development in Alcatel Microelectronics.