Meet Our Directors – Dr. Dong-Su Kim & Ziad Asghar
LG and Qualcomm have been corporate partners of EvoNexus since 2002. During that time, both companies have had executives serving on the Board of Directors. Corporate representatives of these companies engaged with EvoNexus startups, often starting with the selection process, continued on in mentoring roles, potential partnerships, early-stage investments, and M&A activities. The hands-on involvement of staff from these two companies accelerates the development and ultimate success of the startups in the EvoNexus portfolio.
Dr. Dong-Su Kim and Ziad Asghar have a global view of technology trends and disruption through the footprint of their respective companies. This perspective guides the organization’s selection process with over 7,000 startups applying to enter EvoNexus. LG and Qualcomm create technology and products that impact the majority of the world’s population. Having them serve on the EvoNexus Board and their respective companies’ support provides EvoNexus a sustainable vision for the future of early-stage innovation through a unique non-profit incubation program.
Dong-Su Kim, PhD, CEO, LG Technology Ventures
Dong-Su Kim is the CEO and board member of LG Technology Ventures. He has over twenty-five years of investment, strategy, planning, and technology experience. As the founding CEO, Dong-Su established the fund structure, hired key people, and initiated investment operations. Under his guidance, LG Technology Ventures manages over $400 million of fund assets and invests in early-stage information technology, automotive, manufacturing, life-sciences, energy, and advanced materials companies. Portfolio companies include AmazeVR, Lygos, May Mobility, Ridecell, and EvoNexus portfolio company, BRELYON. Dong-Su Kim was also recently promoted to corporate Executive Vice President.
Previously, Dong-Su was Vice President and GM of Samsung Ventures America where he managed offices in Menlo Park, Boston, London, and Tel Aviv. He has led the investment of over thirty companies in diverse sectors including semiconductors (Soft Machines, Verisilicon, Wave Computing), equipment (DCG Systems, IMS, Reno Subsystems), materials (Nanosys, NexPlanar, Voltaix), and storage systems (Pure Storage).
Dong-Su has earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, and a B.S. with Honors in Applied Physics from California Institute of Technology.
Ziad Asghar, Senior Vice President & General Manager – XR & Spatial Computing, Qualcomm
Ziad Asghar is senior vice president and general manager at Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (QTI). He leads XR and spatial computing, covering all AI platform products. Ziad drives the definition of products, ensuring that our products lead in technology and enable best-in-class user experiences while making tradeoffs between features, power, performance and cost. He leads application processor technologies including artificial intelligence, camera, graphics, CPU, audio, video and security. Qualcomm has acquired two EvoNexus companies, and invested in six others. He has more than 20 years of experience in the wireless semiconductor industry where he has held a broad set of leadership positions from R&D to product management. Ziad holds an MBA from UCSD and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University and Southern Methodist University.