Management Team
John F.C. Cheong, Ph.D.
President and Chief Executive Officer
 John F.C. Cheong established Space Machine, Inc. in 1999 in Silicon Valley to develop GPS navigation software for mobile devices and in-dash car navigation systems. He is currently President and Chief Executive Officer. Prior to Space Machine, he was a Computer Scientist at the University of California at Berkeley from 1995 to 1998 where he had developed an early prototype of the world's first aerial image delivery system over the Web.
John has 18 years of high-tech industry experience. In the last 12 years, John has participated in the early-stage investment of a number of successful start-ups in Silicon Valley. He is the author of an early technical book entitled: Internet Agents: Spiders, Wanderers, Brokers, and Bots, that explains the underlying technologies for search engines on the Web.
John received the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, and the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin.
Micah K. Peng
Chief Technology Officer
 Micah Peng joined Space Machine in 1999 and served as its lead software architect in the development of GPS navigation technologies. Micah has over 10 years of development experience in the area of embedded software for automotive navigation, route optimization and map matching algorithms for a variety of GPS embedded devices including SmartPhones, PNDs and in-dash AVN head units for the automobile.
Micah holds a Master's in Computer Science from University of California at Berkeley where he was the recipient of a Sun Microsystems Fellowship, and a B.S. in Computer Engineering with highest honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Yi Jiang, Ph.D.
Director of Software Engineering
 Dr. Yi Jiang comes to Space Machine with over 20 years of industry and R&D experience in software technology and applications. Yi brings the agile software development process to the development of car navigation software for the automotive industry. Yi specializes in distributed systems and database technology, and has a proven track record of managing development team for large multi-tier enterprise projects from his earlier engineering management positions with a number of Silicon Valley high-tech companies such as DemandTec, netAthena, Prediwave, and Zembu Labs.
Yi was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Computer Science with the Victoria University of Technology in Australia in his early academic career. Yi holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from James Cook University of North Queensland in Australia, and the M.S. and B.S. degrees in Computer Science from the Shanghai Jiaotong University in China.
Kenneth J. Arendt
Director of Product Development
 Kenneth Arendt joined Space Machine in 1999 and is in charge of the company's product planning and development. Ken has over 10 years of experience in the design and development of human machine interface for car navigation software on SmartPhones, PNDs, and for in-dash AVN head units in collaboration with tier-1 clients for the automotive industry such as Alpine Electronics of America.
Ken oversees the development of various e-commerce stores for the company's products on the Web, and supervises the back-end fulfillment operation at Space Machine. In creating the very best navigation product line, Ken has often worked very closely with ODM partners from Korea, Taiwan, and China to bring together high-quality hardware devices, components, cables and accessories.
Ken's prior experience includes industrial design, graphic design, web design, 3D modeling, rapid prototyping and packaging. Kenneth holds a B.F.A. in Industrial Design from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Akinori Honda
Sr. Technical Manager
 Mr. Akinori Honda joins Space Machine's Tokyo office as Sr. Technical Manager with 30 year of industry experience, including 6 years at Uniden Corporation and 24 years with Hitachi in Japan. Mr. Honda currently manages navigation product specifications, integration testing, quality assurance and technical support from Space Machine's Tokyo office.
In his previous career at Uniden, Mr. Honda has managed PND product specifications and development schedule in a technical liason role working with outside GPS and navigation software suppliers in U.S. and Europe. In his earliest technical career at Hitachi, Mr. Honda has participated in development of software tools, ATM switching devices, PBX software/firmware, and system solution proposal activities for telecommunications carriers such as NTT Docomo in Japan.
Mr. Honda holds a Master's degree in Engineering from the Graduate School of University of Tokyo in 1978 where he had specialized in Artificial Intelligence, and a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from the Department of Mathematical Engineering at the University of Tokyo in 1976.
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