Customer Champion Chair
Cindy Biefnes
Director of Operations, Advantest America Sales Team
Advantest America
Cindy has worked in the ATE industry since 1997. She began her career with Hewlett-Packard supporting the semiconductor test sales team as a contract specialist. She has held various positions at HP, Agilent, Verigy and Advantest including order management, system relocations coordinator, and operations manager for the Americas Customer Business Center. Cindy is currently Director of Operations for the Advantest America sales team.
General Advisor
Don Blair
Business Development Manager
Advantest America
Don graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Ohio Institute of Technology and was first employed by Schlumberger in San Jose, California focusing on digital and mixed signal application development. He was later employed by HP (then Agilent, Verigy and now Advantest) developing applications on various tester platforms. Don has more than 30 years of experience in the automatic test equipment (ATE) business working to maximize customers’ profits in the development and manufacturing of integrated circuits.
Technical Co-Chair
Farida Chandran
High Performance Digital Applications Team
Intel
Farida Chandran is part of the High Performance Digital Applications Team at Advantest America. She has extensive experience with Advantest 93000 Test Systems for test program development, automated test program generation and production interface. Farida has worked with several Advantest customers helping them release products to production for high volume manufacturing. She believes in customer first and works with passion to meet customer needs with creativity and innovation. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering. In her free time, she enjoys reading and listening to e-books, watching movies, cooking and running half-marathons. She is always ready to volunteer at events that promote education, recycle, reuse, reduce in all walks of life.
Marketing Co-Chair
Alina Del Vecchio
Global Marketing Communications
Advantest Corporation
Ali graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Global Studies and Japanese Language from New York University. A recent addition to the Global Marketing Communications team at Advantest, she assists in writing/editing press releases, newsletters, and social media posts. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, painting, and playing video games with friends.
Technical Program Advisor
Ronald Goerke
Senior Consulting Manager
Advantest America
Ronald graduated with a bachelor’s degree in precision- and microtechnology from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany. He joined Advantest Europe in 2000 as an application engineer supporting the T66xx SoC and T63xx LCD tester platforms. In 2006 he transferred to the US and joined Advantest America supporting the T2000 platform at various customer accounts. Ronald began to support the Advantest V93000 platform on SmarTest 8 with a focus on software in 2016. He enjoys watersports in his free time like kite- or windsurfing and playing in the surf of the Southern California coast.
Cindy Biefnes
Don Blair
Farida Chandran
Alina Del Vecchio
Ronald Goerke
Kiosk Chair
Hagen Goller
Head of V93000 SW R&D Product Definition and Management Team
Advantest Europe
Hagen graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Stuttgart and joined Hewlett-Packard in 1997 as a SW R&D engineer for the development of network management systems. In 2002 he moved to the semiconductor automated test equipment (ATE) group of Agilent Technologies as an application expert and held this position for 10 years. After working several years as solution product manager he is now heading the Advantest V93000 SW R&D product definition and management team.
Technical Co-Chair
Dan Grzeda
Analog Signal Chain Quality Manager
Texas Instruments
Dan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois. He joined Texas Instruments in 2000 as a product and test engineer in the Wireless Terminals Business Unit and has since held a variety of roles in the semiconductor industry. He currently is making use of his test engineering expertise as a quality manager within the Analog Signal Chain Business Unit within Texas Instruments.
General Chair
Linda Haenel
Product Owner
Software R&D Germany (BBN)
Linda graduated from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, with an M.Sc. in electrical engineering and information technology where she concentrated on semiconductor science. In 2019 she joined Advantest as Application Consultant of the BBN COE team as a product expert, supporting different application cases in the HPC domain. In 2023 she moved as a Product Owner into SW R&D where she works with application experts to transform customer requirements into innovative software features.
Marketing Chair
Hira Hassan
Global Marketing Communications Specialist
Advantest America
Hira graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of the Pacific. As a member of Advantest’s Global Marketing Communications team, she leads Advantest's social media marketing initiative and supports global branding activities like industry conferences. She is skilled in graphic design and has interests in digital marketing communications. Hira enjoys discovering new music, traveling and playing board games with her friends.
Workshop Chair
Joe Kelly
Principal Applications Engineer
Advantest America
Joe graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Ph. D. in Ceramics Engineering and Materials Science, both from Rutgers University. He has over 20 years of experience in the semiconductor test industry, co-authoring two university-level books on ATE and RF test methodologies. Joe is a Principal Consultant in the Advantest Center of Expertise (COE) where he primarily focuses on RF testing and digital modulation techniques.
Hagen Goller
Dan Grzeda
Linda Haenel
Hira Hassan
Joe Kelly
Sponsorship and Operations Co-Chair
Tamanna Khan
Global Marketing Communications Specialist
Advantest America
Tamanna graduated from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in political science. Shortly after graduation, she found her passion for social media and dedicated her time to learning more about digital marketing. She enjoys creating content, studying data analytics, and developing effective marketing strategies that will improve engagement for businesses. As a new member of the Advantest family, she intends to use her expertise to support the Global MarCom team and help increase performance.
Sponsorship Chair
Cassandra Koenig
Global Marketing Communications Senior Manager
Advantest Europe
Cassandra has 25 years’ experience working in marketing communications for the semiconductor industry. She is currently responsible for pan-European and Israel marketing for Advantest, having also worked in different marketing positions for Verigy, Agilent Technologies and HP in the Netherlands and Silicon Valley. Cassandra has sat on industry boards for the annual International Test Conference and SEMI’s Advanced Packaging Conference, in addition to presenting as an expert guest speaker for SEMI’s trade show training web series. She graduated with honors from Clark University with one year at the University of Trier, Germany.
Operations Chair
Junko Nakaya
Global Events Program Manager
Advantest America
For the past 20+ years, Junko served as a global event manager at Cascade Microtech and FormFactor, managing worldwide tradeshows, user group conferences and global sales training programs. She also has hands-on experience with product launch activities and brand integration/transition projects through company acquisitions. Junko is currently the trade show program manager on the Global Marketing Communications team at Advantest America.
Finance Chair
Emily Nguyen
Advantest America
Emily graduated with bachelor’s degree from San Jose State University, major in Accounting. She has been with Advantest for almost 8 years. In her free time, Emily enjoy hiking and traveling.
Technical Chair
Oded Olansky
WCS RF Products Si Test Architect and WCS Haifa Wireless Test Engineering Manager.
Intel
Oded graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Technion University of Haifa, joined Intel in 1990 as a junior Quality Reliability and Test Engineer and since had different roles in the semiconductor mixed-signal test engineering field and gathered 20+ years of experience in a wide range of wireless technologies.
Tamanna Khan
Cassandra Koenig
Junko Nakaya
Emily Nguyen
Oded Olansky
Kiosk Co-Chair
Taro Osumi
T2000 SE System, Customer Support
Advantest Corporation
Taro Osumi graduated with a master's degree in physical engineering from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He joined Advantest Corporation in 2005 and started off as a R&D of the spectrum analyzer and then moved to T2000 RF application engineer section. He moved to work at Advantest Taiwan for 3 years in 2009, and then moved to T2000 IPS (Automotive & Power device) section in 2015 and then migrated to Advantest Europe GmbH for 5 years in 2017. Currently, He is part of the T2000 IPS system overseas customer support team in Japan. He enjoys cycling on the race bike and watersports like surfing in his free time.
Operations Co-Chair
Anna Wymbs
Corporate Communications Specialist
Anna graduated from Ohio State University in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Economics. Having worked for Advantest through the company’s intern program prior to graduation, she has returned to the Global Marcom Team to aid in internal communications, social media marketing strategy, and global event planning. In her free time, Anna enjoys hiking, reading, and baking with friends.
Taro Osumi
Anna Wymbs
To contact the VOICE Committee, email: corpcomms@advantest.com