Management

Yves Charles, Chief Executive Officer

Yves Charles joined NovaSparks in January 2010 with responsibility for US business development.  In October 2010, Yves was appointed CEO. Prior to joining NovaSparks, Yves was CEO of Sysload Corporation, a worldwide leader in systems management from 2007 to 2009.  From 1996 to 1997, Yves was Chief Executive Officer of Quallaby a software editing firm in network performance management, a firm Yves founded in 1996. After moving Quallaby headquarters to the United States, Yves was responsible for running the International Operations until its acquisition by Micromuse in 2006. Earlier in his career in 1992, Yves founded Apogee Communications, a systems integrator in network and systems management and held the position of Chief Executive Officer until 1997.  During this period the revenue of Apogee, grew from $1 million to $30 million.

 

Marc Battyani, President/Chairman/Chief Technology Officer

Marc Battyani, is one of the two co-founders of NovaSparks.  A thought-leader in real-time high performance computing and networking with FPGA hardware, Marc Battyani brings 25 years of experience in the electronic systems design and the design of the associated application domain specific cores and compilers leveraging the computing power of FPGAs and enabling their uses outside of their traditional markets. Prior to founding NovaSparks, Marc was the founder of Fractal Concept a contract research company developing a range of products including CT scanners, ultrasound echographic systems or various smart sensors for the industrial, medical and military markets. Marc Battyani holds an MSc in electronics from Supelec (France) and Computer Science from Paris XI / UDM (Canada). He is also known for several open sources projects for the Common LISP programming language.

 

Jean-Eric Finck, Chief Financial Officer

Jean-Eric has more than 20 years’ experience in the electronics industry. In 2010, Jean-Eric joined NovaSparks as Chief Financial Officer and oversees NovaSparks’ finance, human resources and corporate services departments.  Jean-Eric joined from a role as Chief Financial Officer from Action d’Eclat (Healthcare communication) from 2003 to 2010.  Previous positions included Operations Director EMEA at Openwave (mobile telecom) as from 2001 to 2002. Jean-Eric graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Electroniqueet de Radioelectricité de Grenoble (ENSERG) and holds a MBA from HEC Paris, France.  After two years in the oilfield industry, Jean-Eric joined Philips France in 1983, where he held various positions including microelectronics engineer from 1983 to 1988, financial controller from 1990 to 1993 (Philips Communication Systems), Chief Financial Officer from 1994 to 1997 and Chief Executive/Operating Officer from 1997 to 2000 (Philips Industrial Electronics, Philips Smart Cards & Systems, Philips Microwave).

 

Matthew Gadd, VP Sales and Operations, EMEA

Matthew joined NovaSparks in early 2011 as VP of Operations for EMEA.  Prior to joining NovaSparks, Matthew worked with Calypso Technology where he was responsible for new business sales for four years. In this role, Matthew worked with major buy-side and sell-side clients, playing a key role in developing the buy-side value proposition for Calypso and delivering business value to all clients adopting their solution.   Prior to joining Calypso, Matthew was at SunGard Front Arena, BT Syntegra and prior to that, spent ten years at Reuters, in both London and New York focussing on business development and developing client focussed solutions in the financial information, Information Management & Risk Management verticals. Prior to his role at Reuters, Matthew enjoyed various strategic roles including those at Oracle and at Unisys.

 

Olivier Baetz, VP, Sales and Operations, North America

Olivier Baetz joined NovaSparks in April 2011, bringing with him over ten years of experience selling and implementing low latency technology solutions for the financial industry.  In 2000, Olivier was part of the original team at Radianz, the first global Extranet for the financial industry. At Radianz, Olivier successfully designed the solution for the original “proof of concept” customer which established the value of the Radianz community model. He also ran the North American Sales Engineering team for five years and was instrumental in the creation of the Radianz ULTRA service which provides ultra-low latency exchange connectivity to high-frequency trading firms.  In 2009 and 2010, Olivier built and led the global technical convergence project team to integrate the Radianz platform into the global BT Network. Olivier started his career in telecoms designing and selling managed network solutions for large multinational firms. Olivier holds a MS in Telecom Engineering from ENST Paris and an MBA from Wharton with a major in Finance. When he is not working, Olivier enjoys sailing, surfing, skiing and every good wine from around the world.

 

Ben Hyde, Software VP Engineering

Ben Hyde is Vice President of Software Development at NovaSparks.  Ben is a software industry veteran whose prior roles and employers include teaching computer science at CMU, designing multiprocessors at BBN, building compilers, architecting Lotus 123 for the Macintosh, and real-time expert systems at Gensym.  Ben played an integral part in founding the Apache Software Foundation where he served both as a board member and as VP for the HTTP server project.

 

Pierre Gardrat, Hardware VP Engineering

Pierre joined NovaSparks in 2010 as Hardware VP Engineering.Prior to joining NovaSparks, Pierre worked in the FPGA development industry for seven years, starting his career in the French ministry of the interior and then serving as firmware developer and application engineer in EVE, an EDA company leader of FPGA-based emulation.Pierre graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST Paris) and holds an MSc from University of Marie Curie, Paris.