Executive Management

Morris Young co-founded AXT in 1986 and has served as a director since 1989. Dr. Young served as our Chairman of the Board of Directors from February 1998 to May 2004 and as our president and chief executive officer from 1989 to May 2004. From 2004 until his retirement in 2006, Dr. Young served as our chief technology officer. He was reappointed as our chief executive officer on July 16, 2009 and Chairman of the Board of Directors on August 12, 2021. From 1985 to 1989, Dr. Young was a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Young has a B.S. degree in metallurgical engineering from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, a M.S. degree in metallurgy from Syracuse University, and a Ph.D. in metallurgy from Polytechnic University. 

Gary Fischer joined AXT as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in August 2014 with responsibility for AXT's global finance and accounting organization. He is a Silicon Valley veteran, with extensive experience working in Asia and Europe. In 1993, Mr. Fischer joined ISSI, a leader in advanced memory solutions, as Chief Financial Officer. He took the company public in 1995 and later became its president and Chief Operating Officer. In 2005, he joined eRide, a fabless semiconductor company that develops both GPS devices and software for location-based services. The company was acquired in 2009. Mr. Fischer continued with eRide as a consultant into 2014 and expanded his consulting practice to assist a number of growth companies on a variety of finance and M&A projects. He holds a Master degree in Business Administration from Santa Clara University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara.