Leadership Team
Our experienced, multidisciplinary team serves Avoca customers with a rich diversity of domain expertise, including speech recognition, embedded software and electronics design, telephony systems, silicon chip design, and the management of innovative projects for creating new applications, new products, and successful partnerships.
Iain Scott – President
An electronics engineer by training, Iain is an experienced technology innovation executive. As VP and General Manager of MOSAID’s Semiconductor Division, he grew the team to become the world’s largest independent memory design house. Along the way he pioneered application specific memory technologies for ASIC and DRAM processes, as well as championing the establishment of new standards for wide-word and synchronous DRAM products. Previously he led product marketing and development teams at Gennum, where he identified new markets, and delivered cutting edge products, for broadcast quality video switches. He began his design career with Marconi and National Semiconductor.
Yves Normandin – Senior Advisor, Speech Technologies
Yves is a leading authority in speech recognition technology and spoken dialog systems, with over 15 years of experience in the field spanning research, product and application development, as well as market & business development. He was the key founder and leader of Locus Dialog, a speech recognition company with technology and products installed in over 600 customer sites in North America and Europe. Prior to that he spent ten years building the highly respected speech recognition group at CRIM (Computer Research Institute of Montreal). He holds a Masters Degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in speech recognition from McGill University. Known as a technology innovator, Yves has published over 30 papers in the field, and some of the techniques he pioneered are now used in the most advanced speech recognition systems.
Gord Harling – CTO
Gord has over 25 years of experience in the telecom and datacom IC industries. Recognized as a technology innovator, he has led design teams for ICs in voice signal processing, on-chip memory for portable devices, and satellite imaging applications. He was design team leader at NovAtel on the first single chip digital section for a cellular radio. Gord founded Goal Semiconductor, an IC design services company, and was CEO for 8 years prior to it being acquired by Mosel-Vitelic. He was founding CEO of Elliptic Semiconductor in 2002 and is presently Chairman. Gord has also held senior management and technical positions at Mitel Semiconductor, Dalsa, and ATMOS, and has acted as a private consultant for semiconductor companies and venture capital investors.
Richard Shorkey – Chief Financial Officer
Rick is a Chartered Accountant with more than 25 years of experience in senior financial and general management roles. Working across a broad range of industries – from software to semiconductors – in the last 10 years he has held CFO positions with several companies including Bitflash Inc. (scaleable vector graphics software) and ATMOS Corporation. Previously he was VP Finance and Administration for GMSI Inc. (formerly Gandalf Mobile Systems Inc.), a world leader in mobile data communications.