Michel Tombroff, CEO

Michel joined SoftKinetic after 17 years in the software industry where he held senior engineering and management positions with companies in the start-up, pre-IPO and public stages. Prior to SoftKinetic Michel spent 8 years at TIBCO Software (NASDAQ:TIBX) in Palo Alto (CA), Paris and London, where his last position was Vice President Sales. Before that, Michel spent 7 years at real-time operating system company Chorus Systems (acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1996), where his last role was Head of Engineering. Most recently Michel was Vice President Europe at Mathon Systems, the information risk management company founded by John Mathon (co-founder of TIBCO Software.) Michel received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Brussels and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Barbara.

André Miodezky, President and Strategist

André co-founded Optrima in 2009. André Miodezky spent 26 years in various key positions in IT service and distribution companies, engaged in business development, sales, consulting and management activities. André has successfully introduced many innovative IT products and solutions in the EMEA region. These include Microsoft Messaging systems, the VMWare product line, ColdFusion and WebTrends web technologies, Verity search and knowledge management solutions, and Brooktrout voice and fax boards,among many others. He has also provided IT services to many large accounts, including European Union institutions, start-ups and other companies in the sectors of banking, insurance, telecommunications and industry.

Frederic Papeians, COO and CFO

Frederic joined SoftKinetic from Hochschild Mining plc in London (UK). Previous to this position, Frederic spent 15 years at Alcatel (now Alcatel-Lucent) where he held a variety of management positions. From 2000 to 2006, he served as Vice President Sales & Marketing Europe & South (Europe, Middle East, Africa, India and South America) at Alcatel’s headquarters in Paris (France). Prior to this role, Frederic was based in Antwerp (Belgium), and served as Manager, Marketing and Business Development for Northern Europe. From 1995 to 1998, Frederic, as Deputy General Manager and Member of the Board of Directors, successfully started the alternative telecom operator Metrolel in Barranquilla (Colombia). Frederic joined Alcatel in 1989 as a Sales Manager for Singapore and Australia. Frederic received an M.Sc. in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Brussels and earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Eric Krzeslo, co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer and VP Product Marketing

Eric has been a 3-D enthusiast for more than 15 years and has managed the development efforts of SoftKinetic since 2003. Before SoftKinetic Eric was a founding member of 72dpi, a company involved in driving 3-D multi-player games for simultaneous audiences of over 200 people. Prior to that Eric launched the 3-D modeling and rendering studios for Belgium's most renowned architectural firm. Eric graduated from the Victor Horta Architecture Institute in Brussels.

Daniël Van Nieuwenhove, co-founder, CTO and VP Technology and Products

Daniël co-founded Optrima in 2009. He received an engineering degree in electronics with great distinction at the VUB (Free University of Brussels) in 2002. His 2009 Ph.D. degree from the same institution was on the subject of CMOS circuits and devices for 3D Time-of-flight imagers. While co-founding Optrima, he brought its proprietary 3D CMOS time-of-flight sensors and imagers to the market.

Virgile Delporte, VP Marketing

Virgile joined SoftKinetic from Dassault Systemes, where he held a senior management position at 3DVIA, the sixth and newest brand of Dassault Systemes, specializing in 3D development and web tools, following the acquisition of Virtools in 2005. He previously started, managed and grew the first subsidiary of Virtools between 2003 and 2006 in Montréal, Canada. Virgile graduated from the South Bank University of London (Business Adminstration) and from the University of Paris X (Masters in International Trade) and brings over 13 years experience in the Entertainment and Middleware industry.

Tim Droz, VP Sales

Tim joined SoftKinetic in 2011 after a 10 year tenure at Canesta (recently acquired by Microsoft) where he was VP Platform Engineering and head of the Entertainment Solutions Business Unit (ESBU). Prior to Canesta Tim served as Sr. Director of Engineering at Cylink Corporation (now SafeNet) where his team developed and supported Cylink’s core LAN and WAN hardware encryption products into multinational finance and government institutions.  Before that, Tim led hardware development efforts in embedded and web-based signature capture payment terminals at @pos.com.  Tim also held engineering positions at EDJ Enterprises and IBM, concentrating in design and development of network infrastructure products and store-system (point-of-sale) products. Tim’s expertise is in program execution and delivery of hardware and software systems, leading the industry in gesture and natural user interfaces. Tim earned a BSEE from the University of Virginia and a MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Mike Nichols, VP, General Manager, Softkinetic Studios

Mike is managing the development of content and applications. Mike is a 20+ year veteran of the gaming industry, and joined SoftKinetic from Microsoft Games Studio, where he worked as an Executive Producer helping define & co-ordinate development for what would become Kinect. Mike co-founded Surreal Software in 1994 and grew the company and portfolio to become a AAA cross-platform developer with over 60 employees and 6 published franchise titles by 2004. After the Surreal was purchased in 2004 by Midway, Mike successfully transitioned the company onto next generation platform and grew the company to over 100 employees. Mike remains endlessly enthusiastic, creative and passionate about creating high quality interactive entertainment and applications.

Xavier Baele, co-founder, Chief R&D Officer & Software Director

Xavier graduated in 1998 in Electronics with great distinction at the University of Brussels. He worked as a researcher since 1998 at the LISA laboratory, Laboratory of Image Synthesis and Analysis. There, Xavier specialized in Computer Graphics during his dissertation (1998) and PhD (2003) building thereby a solid experience in real-time 3D. In 2003, he began working on the IGNEV project (Gestural Interface for Navigation into Virtual Environment) that propelled SoftKinetic iisu middleware into its current evolution.

Gilles Pinault, co-founder and CCO - Chief Creative Officer

In 2003 Gilles brought his first prototype of 3D gesture recognition based interface to a collaboration that led to today's SoftKinetic. By marrying creativity and sciences, Gilles drives technology to innovative ways. Through his education in architecture in Brussels (Victor Horta Institute of Architecture – Brussels, Belgium ) and Virtual Reality in Laval (Master Degree InnoVR – ISTIA – Angers, France), he developed new methods that link people to virtual spaces. That passion drove him to develop new interface methodologies that are the foundation of SoftKinetic. Gilles is a unique scientist who has the skills to conceptualize and deliver.