Former Volvo CCO joins PhotonDelta board
Integrated photonics hub looks to bridge the gap between photonic chip and automotive manufacturing
Lex Kerssemakers, former CCO of Volvo, has joined PhotonDelta’s supervisory board. Netherlands-based PhotonDelta, a leading hub for the integrated photonics industry, says that bringing Kerssemakers on board is the ideal way to bridge the gap and synergise the development and manufacturing of photonic chips with automotive manufacturing.
A veteran of the automotive industry for over 35 years, Lex Kerssemakers joined Volvo early on – starting out in the Netherlands before moving to a variety of countries such as Germany, Belgium, Sweden, the UK, and the US where he was CEO for the Americas. In fact, this is the first time he’s been back in the Netherlands in more than 30 years.
“At Volvo, we started to work with Lidar systems in cars, and the potential of autonomous driving vehicles. The key question was how is that transformation going to happen? That’s when I started reading about integrated photonics,” says Kerssemakers (pictured above).
“With the €1.1 billion National Growth Fund Program on the horizon, we are very excited about the addition of Lex Kerssemakers to our supervisory board. His strong automotive expertise fits perfectly with our goal to understand the dynamics of the automotive industry with the aim to develop world-class application technology, '' said René Penning de Vries chairman of the supervisory board, PhotonDelta.
During Kerssemakers' time at Volvo the company had to reinvent itself multiple times from both engineering and commercial perspectives. With Volvo’s reputation for safety in a relatively conservative industry, Lex quickly learned the importance of investment in emerging technologies. That’s continued forward to this day, where the focus is now on autonomous driving vehicles.
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