Management Team

Lightwire has a strong and proven management team including extraordinary individual and team-based research and product development contributors, proven communications and optical product design managers and an executive team experienced in moving technology from R&D into high-volume production products. The team has successfully managed the development and market introduction of communications and optical products accounting for over $5 billion dollars revenue during the past 10 years.

Ameesh Divatia , President and Chief Executive Officer

Ameesh Divatia came to Lightwire in October 2009 after serving as an Executive Advisor since October 2008. Ameesh has over 20 years of experience in the enterprise networking, service provider infrastructure and enterprise storage markets. From May 2006 to September of 2008, he was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intelligent Network Products at
Emulex Corporation. Ameesh came to Emulex as a result of the company's acquisition of Aarohi Communications. He was Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aarohi Communications since its inception in April 2001 and was responsible for establishing Aarohi as a successful player in the storage virtualization and converged fabric space. Prior to joining Aarohi, he was Chief Product Strategist for the optical transport business unit at Cisco Systems. Ameesh came to Cisco in December 1998 through the acquisition of PipeLinks, Inc, a company he founded in July 1996 and was its Chief Technology Officer. Ameesh received a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from UC Irvine and earned his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the M. S. University of Baroda.

Kal Shastri, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Technology Officer

Kal Shastri is a serial entrepreneur, an angel investor and an incubator of startups. Kal founded Lightwire, Inc. in 2002, where he currently works on the technical team and serves on the Board of Directors. In the past, Kal has served on the boards of Photuris, OptronX, Circadiant Systems, and Smart Bridges. He received his Ph. D. in Physics from Columbia University in May, 1985 and M. Sc. in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Kanpur in May, 1976.

From 1985 to 1997, Kal worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he worked on Physical Layer circuits in CMOS, NMOS and Si-BiPolar technologies. He designed the industry's first fully integrated CMOS Laser Driver with temperature compensation for optical transmitters without thermo-electric cooling. He was involved from system level to transistor level design and designed the 32-bit micro-controller based system for - Micro-programmable Accelerator for Rapid Simulations - MARS. In 1997, he founded AANETCOM, the first company to demonstrate and commercialize multiple channel CMOS Serdes. AANETCOM was acquired by PMC-Sierra in 2000 and continues to contribute to its product portfolio.

David Piede, Director of Engineering - Optoelectronics

Prior to joining Lightwire in 2003, David Piede founded and served as CEO and COO of OptronX, a producer of high-performance optical modules, which was acquired by JDS Uniphase in 2002. Prior to OptronX, he led the high-speed module engineering group at Lucent Optoelectronics. He possesses a BSEE and a MSEE from Drexel University.

Bipin Dama, Director of Engineering - IC Design

With over 20 years experience in system design, CAD tools, IC design and product architecture, Bipin Dama leads the IC design team at Lightwire. Prior to Lightwire, Dama served with Shastri as part of the development team at AANetcom and worked at PMC-Sierra after the acquisition of AANetcom, becoming Manager of the Enterprise and Storage Division at that company. His other experience includes Bell Laboratories in NJ and PA and Larsen & Toubro Ltd, in India. He possesses a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University, NJ.

Kathy Yanushefski, Director of Program Management, Contracts and IP

Since joining Lightwire in 2003, Kathy Yanushefski has been responsible for managing corporate relationships and the critical IP portfolio of Lightwire. She has managed the application and prosecution of more than 120 patents of which more than 50 have been granted. Prior to joining Lightwire's management team, Kathy served as Vice President of Engineering at Opticalis, a VC funded optical start up. Prior to Opticalis, she spent 20 years at Bell Labs in engineering, engineering management, applications engineering and marketing of fiber optics subsystems including transmitters, receivers, transceivers, photo detectors and EDFAs, ultimately serving as Director of the $200M EDFA development organization. She has extensive experience in developing high-speed optoelectronics technologies and managing the transition of those technologies into high growth, field-proven products. She possesses a BSEE degree from Bucknell University and a MSEE degree from Lehigh University.