George Kren

George Kren was born in Prague, Czech Republic and obtained his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Czech Institute of Technology. He joined the National Research Institute for Materials in the Material Inspection Division and filed more than a dozen patents in electromagnetic methods for material inspection and metrology. He became an active member of The American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT). 

In 1970, George visited the United States, where he consulted for the Retina Foundation in Boston, and for Randex in Palo Alto. He returned to Prague, and in 1972 he began a Ph.D. program under Professor Raclavsky at the University of Brno. His PhD focused on "Detection of Extremely Low Magnetic Fields.” A year later, George married his wife Martina and they decided to emigrate to the U.S., interrupting his Ph.D. program. After arriving in California, George had to choose between academia and industry. George decided on the latter, and in 1976 he co-founded Tencor Instruments, a company that later merged into KLA-Tencor. 

George was also instrumental in founding the Surfscan Division and in acquiring companies Censor in Lichtenstein and NanoPro in Germany. For many years he had a leading role in SEMI Standards, where he became a recipient of the SEMI Lifetime Award in 2004. After almost 40 years in Inspection and Metrology at the company, George semi-retired and joined a small company named DCG in the position of an adviser to the CEO for 18 months. George is now retired and lives with his wife, Martina in Monterey, California.