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X-Rayted Files
Column from: Bill Cardoso
Dr. Bill Cardoso started his first company at age 17 in Brazil, selling it a few years later to work for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). At Fermilab, he led research in nuclear physics to build the equipment that discovered the Higgs Boson (and the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics). After 10 years at Fermilab, Bill was ready to get back to the entrepreneurial life. He moved from Chicago to sunny San Diego to start Creative Electron in his garage in 2008.
Creative Electron is over 10 years old now, and after the acquisition of FocalSpot in 2016, it became the largest U.S. manufacturer of X-ray systems to the electronics industry. Creative Electron’s fast growth has been driven by its artificial intelligence (AI) expertise combined by a core competency in X-ray inspection. As the CEO of Creative Electron, Bill leads the team of engineers and scientists who combine AI and X-rays to deliver the most intelligent X-ray machines in the market.
Bill received his associate degree in electronics at age 13 and went on to achieve a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering as well as his MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the Illinois Institute of Technology and sits on the technical committees of SMTA International, SMTA Counterfeit Conference, and SMTA LED Conference; Components for Military and Space Electronics Conference; SPIE Photonics; and the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium. Bill is a senior IEEE member and is on the board of the SMTA, MiraCosta College, and Illinois Institute of Technology. He has written two books and over 150 technical publications. In their spare time, Bill’s family is putting together a 42,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.