Sanjay Mehrotra

Sanjay Mehrotra is co-founder of SanDisk and served as the company's President and Chief Executive Officer until it was purchased by Western Digital in 2016.^[1][2] In April 2017, it was announced Mehrotra would be the next CEO of Micron Technology, taking over from Mark Durcan.^[2]

Founding

Mehrotra co-founded SanDisk in 1988 and served as President and CEO from 2011 until 2016. He previously served as executive vice president and chief operating officer, senior vice president of engineering, vice president of product development and director of memory design and product engineering.^[3]

He has more than 30 years of experience in the non-volatile semiconductor memory industry, including engineering and management positions at SanDisk, Micron, Integrated Device Technology, SEEQ Technology, Intel Corporation and Atmel Corporation.

Education

Mehrotra spent a few years of his early education in a Delhi school, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Lodhi Road. He started college at BITS Pilani and then transferred to University of California, Berkeley. Mehrotra was awarded his bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences by Berkeley. He is a 2009 graduate of the Stanford University Graduate School of Businesses' Executive Education Program.

Mehrotra holds more than 70 patents. He has published articles in the area of non-volatile memory design and flash memory systems.

Awards

Mehrotra has received the following awards and honors:

• Mehrotra was honored by the American India Foundation for “personal philanthropic efforts and for leading SanDisk’s programs to advance educational opportunities for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, March 21, 2015.^[4]
• “Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Chinese Institute of Engineers USA at the 13th annual Asian American Engineer of the Year Award ceremony March 1, 2014.^[5]
• "CEO of the Year” from the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Silicon Valley in recognition of his leadership in advancing SanDisk’s community service activities, December 10, 2013.^[6]
• "Distinguished Alumni Award in Electrical Engineering” from the University of California, Berkeley, 2013.^[7]
• “IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Data Storage Device Technology Award” (with SanDisk co-founders Ei Harari and Jack Yuan) for “leadership in the development and commercialization of Flash electrically erasable programmable read-only memory-based data storage products,” 2006.^[8]

Activities

Mehrotra delivered a commencement address to graduates of the University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering on May 18, 2014. His speech detailed his own journey and related the lessons he has learned along the way from being an international student to the head of a Fortune 500 company.

On April 18, 2014, Mehrotra along with S. Shankar Sastry, Dean and Carlson Professor of Engineering at UC Berkeley, opened the SanDisk Computing Lab College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. The lab was funded by a $1 million donation by SanDisk to the College of Engineering. The donation also funded recently completed renovations to Cory Hall, home of the College’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

References