AVITIC

ITIC

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Karen Yu

President

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Bruce Han

Vice President

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Jonathan Wu

Investment Manager

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Karen Yu is a pioneer of social entrepreneurship and she co-founded the first Fairtrade company, Okogreen coffee, which is listed in Taiwan GISA board. She established the chapter of international Fairtrade Organization in Taiwan and co-worked with global partners to promote fairtrade development worldwide in order to improve producers' living standard in poor countries.

Yu was elected as a legislator-at-large in 2016. She was passionate about innovation and equality, and pushed the improvement of the startup ecosystem as well as social innovation system by amending laws such as foreign talents recruitment, incentive scheme for foreign capital investment in Taiwan, sandboxes of fintech and unmanned vehicles, angel investment, etc. She also initiated Taiwan-USA talent circulation Alliance and promoted digital economy development between Taiwan and the United State.

Karen took office as the information and technology department director of Taoyuan City Government in 2020 where she led the digital transformation and smart city development. Yu adopted many technology applications to take care of citizens’ life during the pandemic which made Taoyuan City win the first prize in “2022 WITSA Smart Cities Award” on behalf of Taiwan, recognized and praised by global ICT industry, “the Oscars” in the ICT field.

Educational qualifications
● Executive Master of Business Administration Program/ National Taiwan University
● MA Anthropology of Food / School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
● Bachelor of Economics / National Taiwan University (NTU)

Experience
● President / Industrial Technology Investment Corporation(ITIC)
● CEO / Taiwan Industrial Technology Association(TITA)
● Director / Information and Technology Department of Taoyuan City Government
● Legislator
● Visiting Scholar / Stanford University, USA
● Alumni of IVLP / U.S. Department of State
● Chairman / Okogreen Ltd.
● Chairman / Taiwan Fairtrade Association
● Author / “A Revolution at Your Table” ＆ “Tech for Good”

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Bruce has been in the venture business for over ten years, and currently focuses on scouting the best ideas and tech globally, connecting them with ITRI and Taiwan’s manufacturing capabilities, and then bringing them to market.
He is an engineer and material scientist by training, and prior to ITIC spent over a decade in the semiconductor industry.
What's the greatest value you bring to startups?
I'd say it's not just experience in venture, but also deep experience and expertise in industry, from manufacturing to material sciences and semiconductor.
To you, what's the most important trait of a good VC?
A good VC combines solid industry experience with, at the same time, the ability to constantly learn and absorb entirely new ways of thinking and operating. And he or she needs to genuinely love helping startup teams to find resources, especially for founders who are working with VCs for the very first time.

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Jonathan Wu joined ITIC, the venture arm of ITRI, in 2018. He focuses on a ranch of deep tech verticals, including 5G infrastructure, communications, semiconductors, and green energy.
Since joining ITIC, he has engaged with multiple university incubators/ accelerators on the West coast to seek potential startups, including UCLA, UCSD, USC, Caltech, UW, …etc.; he also established a partnership fund with OSU in 2019. He enjoys working with early-stage startups and connecting them to resources in Taiwan, including suppliers, manufacturers, or channel partners at the right stage as the team expands.
Jonathan has a BA in Economics from UC San Diego. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, camping, and playing tennis.

APPLIED VENTURES

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Anand Kamannavar

Global Head

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Yuan-Ping (YP) Huang

Principal

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Walter Liu

Principal

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Anand Kamannavar is appointed vice president and the Global Head of Applied Materials’ venture capital fund. In this role, he manages Applied’s > $400M global venture investment portfolio of 90+ companies across 17 countries. Mr. Kamannavar has led over a dozen venture investments with successful exits including Adesto (NASDAQ: IOTS), Enphase (NASDAQ: ENPH), and Voltaix (acquired by Air Liquide).
Mr. Kamannavar has over two decades of experience in the technology and venture capital industry and new business development. He first joined Applied Ventures in 2006, with a focus on identifying and leading investments in the area of Semiconductor, Energy, Materials, and India. He then went on to head Applied’s new business group which led to Applied’s entry into Optics, Life Sciences, Materials, and other high growth markets.
Previously Mr. Kamannavar worked at Atlas Ventures and Arch Development Partners looking at startups in the broader Alternative energy, Internet, Web 2.0, Media, Software, and Medical sectors.
Before his career in venture capital, Mr. Kamannavar held various engineering and business development roles with Hewlett-Packard's server group in Richardson, TX where he was awarded key U.S. patents. He also co-founded Precision Information Systems which provides financial data and tools to leading financial institutions like Ameritrade, New York Life, and Intuit.
Mr. Kamannavar received an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

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Yuan-Ping (YP) Huang is a Principal at Applied Ventures where he focuses on the intersection of Life Sciences and semiconductor manufacturing. He aspires to help accelerate development of next-generation diagnostic and research tools as well as novel therapeutic modalities by bridging capabilities of Applied Materials and emerging biotechnologies from portfolio companies.
Prior to joining Applied Ventures, YP was an early member of Lam Capital, where he built comprehensive proteomics product strategy and led investments in molecular profiling space. He also worked as an associate at McKinsey & Company, where he advised global pharmaceutical clients on R&D and operations.
YP holds a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from Columbia University as well as an M.S. degree in molecular medicine and a B.S. degree in zoology from National Taiwan University. In his spare time, he enjoys long runs, travel, and casual cooking.

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At AVITIC, Walter focus on AI, IoT & Big Data, semiconductor investments. As a passionate investor and value creator for his entire career, Walter has led both strategic and financial venture investments for multi-international technology corporations since 2016. Before joining Applied Ventures, Walter was the Head of US investment at MediaTek Capital. His investment portfolio includes startups in early and growth stages in US and China, including two unicorns and two exits. Walter has served as a board member or observer at AutoX, Abax Sensing, ScaleFlux and Mauna Kea Semiconductor since investing at Series A or Pre-A rounds.
Other notable deals that Walter has invested include Ventana Micro Systems, Ambiq Micro, DSP Concepts, and DeePhi. Prior to transitioning into venture capital, Walter was a senior strategic marketing manager at Qualcomm and wireless product manager at Huawei and Nokia. He also has seven years of ASIC application and system engineering experience at Qualcomm, Motorola and LCC International, where he designed AT&T’s CDMA network in Los Angeles and supported base station OEMs to deploy 3G networks around the world.
Walter has a MBA in finance and entrepreneurship from Cornell University and M.S. in electrical engineering from UCLA. In his leisure, he is a landscape and portrait photographer, enjoys international traveling with family and weekend traveling with his two daughters for fencing and rhythmic gymnastics competitions.

The team