Dr. Randhir Thakur is executive vice president and general manager of the Silicon Systems Group at Applied Materials, Inc., which comprises the company’s entire portfolio of semiconductor manufacturing systems. In this role, Dr. Thakur is responsible for strengthening the company’s leadership in its core wafer fabrication equipment markets.

He previously was senior vice president and general manager of the Display and SunFab Solar Group from December 2008 to September 2009, where he led the business offering manufacturing systems for flat panel displays, and the company’s thin film solar products for producing large size solar photovoltaic (PV) modules. He previously was general manager of Strategic Operations from May 2008 to December 2008.

Dr. Thakur rejoined Applied Materials in May 2008 from SanDisk Corporation, the world’s largest supplier of innovative flash memory data storage products, where he served as executive vice president of Technology and Fab Operations and was responsible for the company’s NAND flash memory roadmap, design, development, and fab operations. He also served as head of SanDisk’s worldwide operations, responsible for the company’s NAND flash and back end manufacturing footprint, end-to-end supply chain management, corporate quality, corporate procurement, assembly and packaging, product and test engineering, planning and sales operations and cost reduction activities.

From 2000 to 2005, he held variety of executive roles within various semiconductor product groups at Applied Materials, including group vice president and general manager for Front End Products.

Prior to joining Applied Materials in 2000, Dr. Thakur served as chief technology officer and general manager at Steag Electronic Systems, and vice president of Research Development and Technology at AG Associates, and held various technical leadership positions at Micron Technology.

Dr. Thakur holds more than 275 patents and has published more than 200 papers. He received a bachelor of science degree with honors in electronics and telecommunications engineering from the Regional Engineering College, Kurukshetra, India. He received a master of science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Oklahoma.