Stefan K. Lai

Stefan K Lai’s contributions to the development and advancement of flash memory technology has spurred the success and popularity of several consumer electronics devices.  Flash memory became a popular embedded storage solution for cellular phones in the 1990s, and has since contributed to the growth of several significant consumer electronics including digital cameras and digital media players.  Dr. Lai’s work also stimulated the development of the USB flash drive, which has largely displaced floppy and other removable storage technologies, with capacities reaching several gigabytes. An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Lai holds seven patents and has published 34 papers.  Dr. Lai is currently vice president, business Development of Ovonyx, Inc., Calif., and has also held various executive positions within Intel’s flash memory business unit and was a member of the technical staff at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center.