Dr. Karl Rinne received an electronics degree in 1992 from OTH Regensburg (Germany), and a PhD in 1997 from the University of Limerick (Ireland). He has >20 years of industrial R&D experience in the domains of circuit and system design, power conversion, and software design. During his early career he has been working for a number of multi-national companies and SME’s in the electronics industry (Siemens AG Germany, Artesyn Technologies Ireland, Commergy Inc. Ireland).

In July 2001, Dr. Karl Rinne joined the academic staff of the Electronics and Computer Engineering department at the University of Limerick (UL). From 2001 to 2006 he lectured in the areas of circuit design and computer architectures. Until 2006, Dr. Rinne was director of the mixed-signal IC design research group at the Circuits and Systems Research Centre (CSRC). He was principal investigator and collaborator of a number of major state-funded research projects, supervised >5 research students to PhD level and numerous students to Masters level. His R&D interests include high efficiency power conversion, integrated power management, control and algorithms, as well as mixed-signal IC design. Dr. Karl Rinne has an extensive publication record, and presently holds >10 issued patents.

In 2006, Dr. Karl Rinne co-founded UL university spin-out company Powervation Ltd., served on its board during the start-up phase, and subsequently as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) until January 2014. At this point Powervation had received major funding (>30m$, cum) from a variety of pure-investor as well as strategic VCs, employed >30 people at offices in Europe (Cork/Ireland), US (San Jose/CA) and Asia (Taipeh/TW), and achieved significant design wins with tier one networking and computing customers.

In February 2014, Dr. Karl Rinne founded KR64 Technologies Limited with a particular focus on super-modular 3D-integrated power converters and dc/dc converter IP.

Dr. Karl Rinne is CTO and regular IP contributor to Heyday Integrated Circuits, a semiconductor and systems company focusing on isolated/floating drivers for WBG-switches (GaN, SiC).

Dr. Karl Rinne is co-founder of PEK Semiconductor, a fabless semiconductor company focusing on poly-phase WBG-based power conversion IP.

Dr. Karl Rinne continues to lecture and research at the University of Limerick in the domains of power conversion, mixed-signal IC design, advanced digital systems and architectures. He is director of UL's power conversion research laboratory, and principal investigator for a number of government-funded research projects.