About Pharrowtech
Leadership team

Wim Van Thillo
CEO & co-founder
Wim founded Pharrowtech in 2019 and leads it since then. He has more than 15 years of experience focused on mmWave R&D, first as a researcher and later as a program director for imec’s activities in cellular, WiFi and mmWave transceivers. In that role, he was essential in shaping the R&D roadmap and business opportunities for emerging wireless technologies. Wim was also a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley, focused on researching 60GHz high speed wireless communications. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and a degree in Business Economics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Carl De Ranter
VP Engineering, Radio Systems & SW
Carl co-founded Pharrowtech and brings more than 23 years of experience in analog RFIC design and management, and a passion to engage people in innovation, with a focus on consumer electronics. He began his career at RF Magic, an early phase RFIC Startup in San Diego, CA, where he became design manager and helped build the start-up ahead of its merger and IPO. In 2013 he returned to Belgium to join design services house AnSem (now part of Cyient) where he architected NFC and RFID ASICs for pre-IPO customers. Since 2015, Carl has consulted for a tier-1 smartphone chip supplier where he built the team that subsequently developed a significant RFIC IP which is now utilized in many of the world’s most popular mobile phones. Carl holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD, both from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Marco E. Bello
VP Marketing & Product Management
Marco leads Pharrowtech’s Marketing and Product Management. He has more than 20 years of experience in product management, marketing and business development in the very competitive broadband access semiconductor industry. In his career to date, Marco has held leadership roles at GlobespanVirata, Conexant, Mindspeed Technologies, Broadcom/Avago, and Cypress Semi, culminating at Lantiq where he was Vice President and General Manager of the Broadband Access Business Unit. Marco holds a BSc in Nuclear Physics and a MSc in Computer Science, both from Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

Kees Steenbergen
VP Operations & Manufacturing
Kees leads Pharrowtech’s Operations and Manufacturing activities. He combines 25 years of industry experience in semiconductor and telecommunication, covering various technical and managerial roles in start-ups and large multi-nationals. Through his career he has focused on network architecture and chip design, followed by leading product development and quality initiatives to enable mass manufacturing. Prior to its acquisition by Qorvo, he led GreenPeak’s operations from scratch towards company profitability in a highly competitive and cost-sensitive market, through multiple consecutive years of exponential growth, and shipping over 100M devices. Kees holds a MSc in Applied Physics and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.

Peter van Wely
VP Finance & Risk
Peter manages Pharrowtech’s finances. He brings more than 30 years of experience working as a hands-on financial leader for global technology businesses. He has worked with large tech companies such as IBM and DEC as well as various telecoms and semiconductor startups. As Finance Director at National Semiconductors, Peter partnered in the management buy-out of its Netherlands based DECT design center. He was part of the leadership team that grew Sitel Semiconductors into an established international fabless IC company through to its strategic sale in 2011 to Dialog Semiconductors. After that, as Chief Financial Officer of CM.com, Peter was a leading force in the company’s growth to become a mature conversational commerce platform company with subsidiaries in more than 10 countries, ahead of its IPO in 2020. Peter holds a MSc in Business Administration from Newport University (CA).

Micky Mehta
VP Engineering, Digital Systems and SW
Micky is responsible for Wireless Architecture at Pharrowtech and leads the Digital System and Software group. Prior to joining Pharrowtech, Micky was CEO of Celestia UK and before then co-founder and VP of Modem at Blu Wireless. Over the past 25 years, Micky has managed several large technical programmes in Silicon and System design, developing products based on 3GPP, 802.11 and 802.16 standards; often with changing commercial priorities and financial constraints. He is an expert in PHY and MAC layer topics – with specialities in Radio Communications, Digital Signal Processing, Detection Theory, Stochastic Signal Processing, Control Theory, CDMA and OFDM. Micky is entrepreneurial by nature and enjoys the thrill of building and working in start-ups. He has a PhD from University of Southampton and is a Senior Member of the IEEE (SMIEEE).

Claudia Bastian
HR Manager
Claudia drives the strategy and process of building, developing, and engaging an exceptional team to achieve Pharrowtech’s mission. She brings an extensive experience in international Human Resources, most recently as HR Lead for EMEA and APAC at OneSpan. Prior to that, she held various International HR Business Partnership roles at DellEMC. Claudia holds a BA in History and a Masters’ degree in Communication Studies from the Université Catholique de Louvain.

Christian Plante
Christian is responsible for building Pharrowtech’s presence in North America. Prior to joining Pharrowtech, he was Vice-President of Engineering at Hortau. In his 25+ year career in high-technology, Christian has led marketing and engineering teams at companies in Silicon Valley and Canada, including Broadcom, Altera, Actel and Tabula. Christian has an MBA from Queen’s University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Université Laval in Canada.
Technical leadership team

Guerric de Streel
Co-founder & Member of Technical Staff
Guerric is specialized in analog and RF design in advanced CMOS technology with deep expertise in chip-package-antenna co-design for highly-integrated mmWave systems. Guerric holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Université Catholique de Louvain and was a visiting researcher at EPFL’s Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit lab.

Khaled Khalaf
Co-founder & Member of Technical Staff
Khaled is a specialist in system and IC design for mm-wave wireless applications with more than 10 years of experience in mm-wave CMOS IC design R&D. As chip architect, Khaled led the development of imec’s latest generations of 60 GHz phased-array transceivers. He holds a MSc degree from TU Delft and a PhD from VUB in collaboration with imec. He worked with Scenario Design Services and spent 2 years at Infineon Technologies.

Qixian Shi
Co-founder & Member of Technical Staff
Qixian is an expert RF designer with over 8 years of experience in mm-wave frequency synthesis and distribution for wireless transceivers and automotive applications. He was a key contributor to the first standard compliant 60 GHz transceiver prototype in imec and has been responsible for several projects with top-class industry partners. He is passionate about transferring research results into commercial products. Qixian holds an MSc degree from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a PhD degree with highest honor from Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Pieter Vorenkamp
Independent Chairman of the Board
Pieter is a Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Syntiant Corp. Previously, he worked at Cadence Design Systems, where he was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the IP Group. Before that, he spent nearly 20 years in leadership at Broadcomwith roles including Senior Vice President of Operations Engineering, responsibile for world-wide manufacturing technology and hardware programs from inception through to high-volume production. During his time at Broadcom, he was also Vice Presidentand Chief Architect, Central Engineering, developing core IP for use throughout the company. Pieter started his career as a research scientist at Philips Research, developing high-speed data-converters. He holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Twente in The Netherlands, and is the named inventor of more than 125-issued U.S and European patents.

Pieter Vorenkamp
Independent Chairman of the Board
Pieter Vorenkamp is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Syntiant Corp. Earlier, Mr. Vorenkamp was senior vice president and general manager of the IP Group at Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ: CDNS).
His career also includes nearly 20 years of leadership roles at Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO). Mr. Vorenkamp was senior vice president of operations engineering where his responsibilities spanned world-wide manufacturing technology and support of all hardware programs from inception through engineering samples into high-volume production. Prior to his operations role, Mr. Vorenkamp was VP & chief architect, Central Engineering developing core IP for use throughout Broadcom.
He started his career as a research scientist at Philips Research, developing high-speed data-converters.
Mr. Vorenkamp received a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Twente in The Netherlands. He is the named inventor of more than 125-issued U.S and European patents.
Investors
Imec.xpand is an early stage and growth venture capital fund with a game-changing approach to turn hardware driven nanotechnology innovation into successful global companies. The fund is independently managed by a team of entrepreneurs, seasoned venture capitalists and business experts and is targeting ambitious tech start-ups that meet all the criteria to become a successful, scalable venture with the potential to change the world.
Bloc Ventures, founded by industry veterans from ARM and Vodafone, is an investment company which targets early stage ‘deep’ technology companies, working with them closely to build world leaders. Structured to identify and build on compelling investment opportunities, Bloc’s collaborative approach creates long term value and mitigates risk for investors.
The KBC Focus Fund is a € 50 million venture capital fund that focuses on deeptech. The fund has the ambition to boost the sector of nanotechnology, microelectronics and IoT. It mainly focuses on Belgium and surrounding countries where well-known expertise centers in this technological area are located.
Innovation Industries is a Deeptech venture capital investor that invests in Hightech, Agri&Foodtech and Medtech businesses. Today, Innovation Industries manages over €275M across two funds and has a team of 15 investment professionals. Its largest investors are the Dutch pension funds PME and PMT. Innovation Industries invests from seed to late-stage and has partnerships with all Dutch technical universities and research institute TNO.