Lynred appoints new president and CEO
Hervé Bouaziz becomes executive president and Xavier Caillouet CEO
Lynred, a provider of IR detectors for aerospace, defence and commercial markets, has appointed Hervé Bouaziz as executive president and Xavier Caillouet as CEO.
Bouaziz and Caillouet bring more than 30 years of executive-level high-tech industrial and defence sector expertise to Lynred. Their experience in aerospace and defence at Safran and Thales, respectively, will usher a new business dynamic according to the company.
Their objective is to use the company's technological skills and the €85M Campus industrial project to increase Lynred’s offering in IR detectors, while strengthening market competitiveness.
Bouaziz joins Lynred from Europrop International, where he served as CEO for four years. Previously, he worked for a decade at Safran where he held several executive and strategic roles in electronics and defence, including his appointment in 2013 as executive VP for strategy and M&A at Safran Electronics and Defense, and in 2016 as VP for military engines programs at Safran Aircraft Engines. Prior to that, Bouaziz had a 20-year career at the French defence procurement agency DGA, where he first started as a test engineer in 1994. Subsequent promotions within the organisation led to his taking charge of the air-to-ground capabilities of the Mirage 2000 and Rafale in the DGA’s aircraft program directorate and being named director of the Mirage 2000 N and D program. Following that, in 2005 he was appointed deputy armaments attaché at the French embassy in Washington, DC. He returned to France in 2008 and to the DGA as head of the armed forces systems division at the defence Analysis Center. Bouaziz holds degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique (1988) and Sup’Aero (1993) engineering schools, as well as the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the United States (2005). He also earned his air force pilot wings in 1994.
Lynred is currently leading the EU HEROIC project, a consortium of ten European partners developing next-generation devices for defensc and security. It is also designing IR detectors for imaging satellite instruments for several European Earth observation missions, such as LSTM. Among other projects, the company is collaborating with partners to help car makers improve the reliability of collision prevention systems by detecting pedestrians or obstacles in adverse visibility conditions, particularly at night.
