The Management Team

Michel Tombroff, CEO - Chief Executive Office

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.

Frederic Papeians, COO - Chief Operating Officer

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 Metrotel in Barranquilla (Colombia). Frederic joined Alcatel in 1989 as Sales Manager for Singapore and Australia.
Frederic received a 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, cofounder and CSO - Chief Strategist Officer

Eric has been a 3-D enthusiast for more than 10 years and has managed the development efforts of SoftKinetic since its early inception more than 5 years ago. Before SoftKinetic Eric was a founding member of 72dpi, a company involved in driving 3-D multi-player games for audiences of over 200 people simultaneously. Prior to that Eric launched the 3-D modeling and rendering studios for Belgiums most renowned architectural firm. Eric graduated from the Victor Horta Architecture Institute in Brussels.

Xavier Baele, cofounder and CTO - Chief Technology Officer

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 into its current evolution

Gilles Pinault, cofounder and CCO - Chief Creative Officer

Six years ago Gilles brought his first prototype of 3-D 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.