IBM EDA Leader Leon Stok Returns as Si2 Board Chair for 2026-27 Term

Leon Stok, IBM’s vice president of Electronic Design Automation, has been reelected chair of the Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) board for the 2026-2027 term, steering the consortium’s push on advanced packaging, chiplet standards, and system-level integration.

Stok’s Si2 and IBM background

Stok isn’t new to Si2 leadership as he served on the board since 2007 and has held multiple leadership roles, including previous terms as board chair.

At IBM, he runs the EDA organization that builds design and verification flows and tools used to create some of the company’s most advanced systems, from IBM Z and Power to IBM Quantum.

An established figure in electronic design automation, Stok earned his Ph.D. from Eindhoven University in 1991 and has delivered more than 40 keynotes, invited talks, and tutorials at major IEEE and ACM conferences and leading universities.

His research spans high-level architectural and logic synthesis, low-power design, placement-driven synthesis, and automated schematic placement and routing, reflected in over 60 published papers and 13 EDA patents.

Si2’s 2026–2027 board lineup

Alongside Stok’s reelection, Si2 announced its newly elected directors for 2026-2027, drawing senior leaders from across the semiconductor and EDA ecosystem:

• Leon Stok, Vice President, Electronic Design Automation, IBM (Board Chair)
• Lu Dai, Vice President of Technical Standards, Qualcomm Technologies
• Jacob Avidan, Senior Vice President, Silicon Technology Group, Synopsys
• Niels Faché, Senior Vice President, Design Engineering Software, Keysight
• Jim Culp, Corporate Fellow, GlobalFoundries
• Wilbur Luo, Vice President, Product Engineering, Custom IC, Custom Products Group, Cadence Design Systems
• Manoj Selva, Vice President and General Manager, Product Enablement Solutions Group, Intel
• Jung Yun Choi, Executive Vice President, Samsung Electronics Memory Business, Design Technology Team, Samsung Electronics
• Bang-hyun Sung, Distinguished Engineer, SK Hynix
• Mo Movahed, Vice President, Siemens EDA
• Gaurav Varshney, Global Director, Technologist, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Texas Instruments
• Viraphol Chaiyakul, Senior Director of Engineering, NXP Semiconductors
• Aveek Sarkar, Head of the Ecosystem and Alliance Management Division, TSMC
• Thomas Ahle, Head of Machine Learning, Normal Computing Corporation

The roster underscores Si2’s role as a neutral forum where chipmakers, EDA vendors, equipment and IP providers, and research partners align on interoperability, design methodologies, and system integration for next-generation silicon.