Kenneth (Ken) Levy

Founder and long-time CEO of KLA Instruments Corporation, whose leadership made KLA dominant in new market areas in the semiconductor manufacturing instrumentation field, Levy has been an entrepreneur and corporate executive associated with the semiconductor capital equipment industry for over 35 years. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was in an accelerated program in junior high school and was accepted to Stuyvesant High School, one of the nine Specialized High Schools in New York City. The school specializes in excellence in academics with a concentration in the sciences. Levy later established a few scholarships at Stuyvesant, and U.S. News & World Report included the school on its list of "Best High Schools" published in December 2009, ranking it 31st.

After receiving his Bachelor's degree from City College of New York and his Master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University, he spent six years in the Aerospace Simulation field at Singer Link in Binghamton, N.Y. From there, Levy joined some former Singer Link employees at Computervision Corporation, an early CAD (computer aided design) company. He was responsible for Computervision's entry into the semiconductor capital equipment industry through their Cobilt Division.

He founded KLA Instruments Corporation in 1975 and served as its CEO from 1975 to 1999. From 1999 until his retirement in 2006, Levy has served as Chairman of the Board. Under his leadership, KLA came to dominate new market areas in the semiconductor manufacturing instrumentation field, innovating technologies in areas such as photomask and reticle inspection, wafer defect inspection, wafer metrology, and yield management software. KLA Instruments and Tencor Instruments merged in 1997. KLA-Tencor is a multi-billion dollar company that is the world leader in process control solutions for the semiconductor manufacturing and related industries.

In addition, Levy has served as a Director Emeritus on the Board of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Institute (SEMI) and as a Board member of Extreme Networks. He has also served on the Boards of several privately held companies including Juniper Networks and Ultratech Stepper. Over the preceding twenty years, he had been active in helping to form and guide the development of young Israeli companies. He was instrumental in the formation of KLA-Tencor Israel in 1986 and has served as the Chairman of the Board of Aprion, Scitex Vision, PowerDsine, and Genoa Technology. He has also served on the Board of Saifun Semiconductor.

In recognition of his many contributions to the industry, Levy has received numerous awards, including the SEMI Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International award in the area of wafer fabrication, the SEMI Lifetime Achievement award, and the Harvard Business School Association "Entrepreneur of the Year" award. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering "for the development and commercialization of automated inspection systems for the semiconductor industry." Levy was also awarded the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame.