Frank W. Schneider

Frank Schneider has extensive experience in the semiconductor, liquid crystal display, and various high tech capital equipment industries.

For the past eleven years he has worked with several (often troubled) companies either as CEO or as a board member helping to strengthen the management team, finding ways to make these businesses grow, and identifying and implementing successful exit strategies.

He is currently a vice president of MKS Instruments, Inc., and a member of the board of directors for Micrel, Inc. Prior to that, Mr. Schneider was the CEO of Ion Systems, Inc., GHz Technology, Inc., and Diablo Optics, Inc. He also served on the technical advisory board of Neomagic, a display controller chip company, and was a member of the board of directors of GMT Microelectronics, Inc.

Earlier, Mr. Schneider was a group vice president of Sharp microelectronics and held many senior positions at Philips Semiconductor, then know as Signetics Corp. He has considerable international experience that includes having lived for five years in Japan where he was started and managed Signetics KK.

He holds BSEE and MBA degrees from West Virginia University and Northwestern University Kellogg school of management respectively and has done other post graduate work at Stanford University and the Wharton school of business.

Frank married Priscilla Burger Schneider, also a graduate (class of 1965) of WVU, and they have four successful children and 6 grandchildren.

He enjoys tennis, sailing, bridge, travel, reading biographies and historical novels and the stock market.

Mr. Schneider retired from MKS Instruments, Inc. where he was vice president and Ionization business unit general manager. Mr. Schneider is currently a member of the board of directors at Micrel, Inc. (MCRL), and GigOptix, Inc. (GIG)