Andrew Rickman

Andrew Rickman OBE (born c. 1960) is the founder, CEO and Chairman of Rockley Photonics based in the UK, Finland and Pasadena, CA.[1] He was Britain’s first Internet billionaire,[2] and a survivor of the dot-com bubble crash.[3][4]

Dr Andrew Rickman

Education

Rickman has a mechanical engineering degree from Imperial College, London;[5] a PhD in silicon photonics from Surrey University, an MBA from Cranfield University and honorary doctorates from Surrey, Edinburgh Napier and Kingston Universities. He is a Chartered Engineer[5] and a Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Physics.

Career and business ventures

Rickman founded Bookham Technology, in 1988, and he also served as its CEO and Chairman of the board.[3][5] The company is now called Oclaro Inc. [NASDAQ: OCLR] and headquartered in San Jose, CA and is the world’s second largest[3] fiber optics telecom component manufacturer. Rickman grew the company from a start-up to a FTSE100 company[3][4] and latterly chaired the business through the consolidation of the telecoms industry.

More recently he was Chairman of Kotura Inc.,[5] a developer of silicon photonics for fiber optic communications, high performance computing and sensing applications, and was instrumental in its development and ultimately successful sale for $82 million in 2013 to Mellanox Technologies, Ltd[6] (NASDAQ: MLNX; TASE: MLNX), a supplier of end-to-end interconnect solutions for servers and storage systems.

Rickman is the current CEO of start up Rockley Photonics.[5] Founded in August 2013, Rockley Photonics plans to facilitate a new generation of ‘mega data centers’ in 2017[7]

Honours and awards

Rickman was appointed an OBE in the Queen’s Millennium Honours list for services to the telecommunications industry,[5] and is a winner of the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for his outstanding contribution to British Engineering.[8][9]

In 2000, Rickman was named UK Technology and Communications Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young.[5]

Other achievements and interests

In 2011, Rickman was awarded an Honorary Professorship at SIMIT, Chinese Academy of Sciences.[5] Rickman has held advisory board positions with the East Asia Institute of the University of Cambridge and Applied Science and Technology Research Institute of Hong Kong.[5] He was a Trustee of The Oxford Trust.[5] He was previously a council member of the UK Government’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).[5] Outside of silicon photonics and integrated communication technologies his interests lie in cutting edge developments in the fields of energy, the environment and new media.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "Rockley Photonics closes 'several million dollar' first funding round". Optics.org. 22 April 2014. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  2. ↑ Auchincloss, Louis (13 September 2002). "Bend it like Bookham: Andrew Rickman, founder of light-curving fibre-optics firm bookham technology, was the first uk web billionaire, then the slump hit. But he still believes in 'Broadband Britain' - and an upturn for his company.". The Engineer. Retrieved 13 February 2016 – via Highbeam Research. (subscription required (help)).
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5b176400-ec8a-11dd-a534-0000779fd2ac.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3xhvTiBSM
  4. 1 2 Hartford, Maggie (16 April 2009). "Entrepreneur's dream". The Oxford Times. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Executive profile: Andrew G. Rickman OBE". Bloomberg Business. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  6. ↑
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ "Engineers receive silver innovation awards". theguardian.com. 29 May 2002. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  9. ↑
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