Ad Vermeer MSc

Senior Systems Architect | Sioux Technologies | Trainer at High Tech Institute

Ad Vermeer is a Dutch mechanical engineer and systems architect whose career spans more than 40 years of high-tech machine development, deep-tech startup leadership, and systems engineering education. He is a senior systems architect and coach at Sioux Technologies in Eindhoven and has been a trainer at High Tech Institute since June 2014, where he teaches Systems Architecting and co-teaches Advanced Mechatronic System Design with Rob Munnig Schmidt.

His work connects classical mechatronics with the practical realities of systems architecture in complex, multi-disciplinary machine programs. His 42-year career has taken him from precision component placement systems at Philips and Assembléon to atomic layer deposition equipment for silicon solar cells and ultimately to a fully autonomous agricultural harvesting robot. All the while, he has consistently translated high technical ambiguity into structured, buildable system designs.

A defining aspect of his approach is what he describes as invention on command: the conviction that creative engineering solutions are not accidental but are the product of rigorous architectural thinking, explicit trade-off analysis and deep domain knowledge applied under real constraints.

Vermeer studied mechanical engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), graduating with an MSc in 1985. After eleven years at Philips CFT (Centre for Fabrication Technology) in Eindhoven and twelve years at – the Philips spinoff producing surface-mount-technology component placement machines – he moved into the startup world in 2009, serving first at TMC Mechatronics and TNO before co-founding a sequence of deep-tech ventures.

As a senior systems architect at SoLay Tec (Eindhoven), a TNO spinoff, Vermeer co-invented the spatial atomic layer deposition (SALD) reactor that deposited aluminum oxide passivation layers on silicon solar cells at a rate of 1.2 nm/s – a throughput roughly 70 times faster than conventional ALD. At Liteq  (Eindhoven), a startup developing back-end lithography equipment for semiconductor packaging, he was a senior systems architect until the company was acquired by Kulicke & Soffa Industries in July 2017.

In December 2014 Vermeer co-founded Cerescon  in Heeze, where he served as co-owner and CTO until the company’s closure in May 2022. Cerescon developed the Sparter – the world’s first selective white-asparagus harvesting robot.

Vermeer is listed as (co-)inventor on more than 40 patents, spanning precision mechatronics, atomic layer deposition reactors and agricultural robotics.

Awards and recognition

His poster presentation “Carrierless substrate motion concept for spatial ALD reactor” (co-authored with Ingmar Kerp of TMC Mechatronics) won best poster at the 1st DSPE Conference on Precision Mechatronics in 2012 and his Cerescon pitch “High-volume asparagus harvesting machine” won best presentation at the 3rd DSPE Conference in 2016. With Cerescon, he won the Accenture Innovation Awards 2017 in the Future Food Solutions category, the FoodNexus Challenge 2017 and the ExpoSE 2017 award for most important innovation of the year. Cerescon ranked 16th in the Top 100 Most Innovative SMEs of the Netherlands in 2018.

Selected Publications

Poodt, P.; Lankhorst, A.; Roozeboom, F.; Spee, K.; Maas, D.; Vermeer, A.

“High-speed spatial atomic layer deposition of aluminum oxide layers for solar cell passivation.” Advanced Materials 22 (32), 3564–3567 (2010). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201000766

Poodt, P.; Cameron, D. C.; Dickey, E.; George, S. M.; Kuznetsov, V.; Parsons, G. N.; Roozeboom, F.; Sundaram, G.; Vermeer, A. “Spatial atomic layer deposition: a route towards further industrialization of atomic layer deposition.” Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A 30 (1), 010802 (2012). DOI: 10.1116/1.3670745

Vermeer, A.; Roozeboom, F.; Poodt, P.; Gortzen, R.

“The business of fast ALD equipment for depositing alumina passivation layers on crystalline silicon solar cells.” MRS Online Proceedings Library (2011). DOI: 10.1557/opl.2011.1497

At High Tech Institute, Ad Vermeer teaches:

• Systems Architecting – a five-day course that trains engineers to translate complex, multi-disciplinary system requirements into robust and maintainable architectures.
• Advanced Mechatronic System Design – co-taught with Rob Munnig Schmidt.

What distinguishes his teaching is the direct connection between the methods taught and the problems he has lived through as a practicing systems architect and entrepreneur.

Ad Vermeer MSc is a senior systems architect and coach at Sioux Technologies and a trainer at High Tech Institute, where he has taught Systems Architecting since 2014. He holds an MSc in mechanical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and is listed as (co-)inventor on more than 40 patents across precision mechatronics, spatial atomic layer deposition and agricultural robotics.