Umesh Mishra, Ph.D.
Chair of The Board
Umesh serves as Transphorm's CTO and Board Chair. He is responsible for the strategic direction of the company, as well as customer relationships and technology. Prior to co-founding Transphorm in 2007, Umesh co-founded Nitres Inc. in 1996 - the first company to develop GaN LEDs and transistors. Nitres was acquired by Cree in 2000. Umesh was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009 and received the IEEE David Sarnoff Award for "The Development of Gallium Nitride Electronics". He is also Professor Above-Scale (the highest academic rank in the University of California system) in the ECE Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he has been a director of several GaN research centers.