T. J. Rodgers Biography/Wiki

T.J. Rodgers is an American prominent scientist and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Cypress Semiconductor and holds patents ranging from semiconductors to energy to winemaking. Rodgers is known for his public relations acumen, brash personality, and strong advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. In April 2016 he stepped down as Cypress CEO and Director, August 2016 after serving for 34 years.

T. J. Rodgers Age

He was born Thurman John Rodgers on March 15, 1948, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

T. J. Rodgers Family

His father was a car salesman who worked for General Motors and his mother was a school teacher, with a master’s degree in radio electronics. Rodgers was a Sloan scholar at Dartmouth College where he played for the Dartmouth Big Green football team. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1970, graduating as salutatorian with majors in chemistry and physics.

T. J. Rodgers Education

In 1973 he received his master’s degree and Ph. D. in 1975 in electrical engineering from Stanford University. Rodgers invented the VMOS process technology while pursuing his Ph. D. degree, which he later licensed to American Microsystems, Inc. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala.

T. J. Rodgers Wife

Rodgers is happily married to Valetta Massey.

T. J. Rodgers Children

He has not revealed whether he has children as he likes to keep his personal life private. However, this information is currently under review and will update it as soon it’s available.

T. J. Rodgers Height

He stands on an average height of 5 ft 3.

T. J. Rodgers Career

After finishing a doctorate at Stanford, he turned down a job offer from Intel, saying that CEO Andrew S. Grove was unlikely to give him the freedom to pursue his own projects. Instead, Rodgers accepted a job at Advanced Microsystems Inc. (AMI), where he continued working on a special chip technology he invented at Stanford, but this project was a failure.

T. J. Rodgers Cypress Semiconductor

In 1982 he founded Cypress Semiconductor and served as founding CEO. Cypress is a semiconductor design and manufacturing company, producing PSoCs, microcontroller, IoT, wireless and USB, PMICs, memory and sensor chips. As CEO, Rodgers was responsible for more than 30 acquisitions, including SunPower and the IoT portfolio of Broadcom Corporation.

T. J. Rodgers

Cypress also benefited from its business with Apple Inc., as its PSoC was behind the iPod click wheel. In April 2016 he stepped down as CEO. In 2015, Cypress had more than 6,000 employees and revenues of US$1.6 billion. The company had about 7,000 issued patents and about 1,200 additional patent applications on record.

Proxy fight

In 2017 Rodgers directed a fruitful intermediary battle against Cypress. He raised concerns relating to executive pay, the state-supported remote challenge just as innate irreconcilable circumstances. In the wake of recording a claim against the organization in April 2017, Rodgers looked to expel official administrator Ray Bingham and Eric Benhamou from the Cypress board and designated Dan McCranie and Camillo Martino as executives.

Rodgers contended that Bingham’s job as a fellow benefactor of Canyon Bridge, a private value subsidize bolstered by the Government of China, comprised an unmistakable irreconcilable situation as securing focuses for the two organizations covered. Bingham was compelled to leave from the Cypress load up toward the beginning of June 2017 and both of Rodgers’ chosen people won the resulting 2017 investor race against Benhamou.

SunPower

Rodgers early perceived the estimation of high-productivity sun based cells delivered by SunPower. As SunPower confronted monetary issues in 2001, Rodgers endeavored to persuade the Cypress board to purchase the sun based cell maker. Rodgers and SunPower CEO Richard Swanson had met during the 70s at Stanford University. Be that as it may, as the Cypress top managerial staff was not keen on sparing the battling organization Rodgers composed a check himself for $750,000.

About a year later Rodgers had persuaded the board to put $9 million in SunPower and a couple of months after the fact Cypress purchased a greater part stake in SunPower. In 2005 SunPower opened up to the world and achieved a market capitalization of $10.4 billion of every 2007. From May 2002 to May 2011, Rodgers filled in as the executive of SunPower.

Enphase Energy

In January 2017, Rodgers put US$5 million in Enphase Energy, a sustainable power source firm represented considerable authority in vitality the board and the creation of sunlight based smaller scale inverters, which change sun oriented vitality to exchanging flow for the electrical matrix. Notwithstanding his venture, Rodgers joined Enphase’s governing body.

T. J. Rodgers Board Memberships

• Bloom Energy, a fuel cell producer.
• Enovix, producer of silicon lithium-ion batteries.
• Enphase Energy, energy technology company.
• Waterbit, precision agriculture company.
• FTC Solar, a renewable energy company.
• Rodgers also served as director of the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Accomplishments

Awards and recognition

1986:

• Entrepreneur of the Year by City of Santa Clara, California.

1988:

• ENCORE (Entrepreneurial Company of the Year) Award from the Stanford UniversityBusiness School

1996:

• “CEO of the year” – Financial World.

1997

• Outstanding Individual Entrepreneurship Award from the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

2000:

• Award from the Healing Institute for his support of the Carver Scholars Program.

2001:

• Cited as one of the “100 People Who Changed Our World.” by Upside.
• Silicon Valley Capitalism Award for “exemplifying the virtues of capitalism and defending capitalism with ethical principles in the media.”
• Angel Award by the International Angel Investors organization for his venture-capital activities supporting the semiconductor industry.
• Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California State University, Hayward.

2002:

• “Top 100 Chief Executives” by Chief Executive.

2005 :

• Inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame.

2006:

• Honored with a Fellow Award from the International Engineering Consortium.

2009:

• Spirit of Ireland Award

Patents

1975
US3878552 – Bipolar Integrated Circuit and Method.
US3924265 – Low capacitance V groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture.

1976
US3975221 – Low capacitance V groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture.

1980
US4222063 – VMOS Floating gate memory with breakdown voltage lowering region.
US4222062 – VMOS Floating gate memory device.

1981
CA1115426 – U-groove mos device.

1988
US5835401 – DRAM with a hidden refresh.
US4764248 – Rapid thermal nitridized oxide locos process.

1999
US5977638 – Edge metal for interconnect layers.

2000
US6131140 – Integrated cache memory with system control logic and adaptation of RAM bus to a cache pinout.

2001
US6185126 – Self-initializing RAM-based programmable device.

2004
US6835616 – Method of forming a floating metal structure in an integrated circuit.
US6730545 – Method of performing back-end manufacturing of an integrated circuit device.
US2004076712 – Fermentation tank wine press.

2005
US6903002 – Low-k dielectric layer with air gaps.
US6847218 – Probe card with an adapter layer for testing integrated circuits.

2006
US7045387 – Method of performing back-end manufacturing of an integrated circuit.

2007
US7227804 – Current source architecture for memory device standby current reduction.

2008
US2008315847 – Programmable floating gate reference.
US2008102160 – Wine-making press.

2009
US7507944 – Non-planar packaging of an image sensor.

2017
US9624094 – Hydrogen barriers in a copper interconnect process.