Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL), announced today the following executive management addition:

Dr. Ben Tsai has joined TEL as senior executive officer for technology. He will report directly to Ken Sato, president and COO, and will focus on TEL's technology development efforts for next generation products and applications.

Dr. Tsai was previously group vice president and chief technology officer for systems at KLA Tencor. He joined KLA in 1984 and throughout his career at KLA and KLA Tencor, has held a number of management positions. From 1992 to 1994, Dr Tsai built up and led the engineering team at KLA-Acrotec, a Japanese-based joint-venture company formed between KLA and Japan Energy, to develop inspection solutions for the flat panel display (FPD) market. Dr. Tsai lived in Japan for two years between 1992 and 1994. He assumed the role of CTO for KLA in 1994 and held it for five years, after which he became general manager of KLA-Tencor's wafer inspection division for a year. In 2000, Dr. Tsai reassumed the role of CTO at KLA-Tencor.

Dr. Tsai earned a master's degree and a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He holds more than twenty patents in the semiconductor inspection and metrology field.

"I am very pleased that Dr. Tsai has joined the TEL executive management team. His breadth of knowledge and experience in the semiconductor industry is an invaluable asset that will further support TEL's technology leadership and he will be an integral leader to help guide our future innovations," Sato said in a statement.