MIPI Alliance Announces Board Leadership Appointments
Gaurav Arora of Google and Aruni Nelson of Intel Corporation appointed board co-chairs to help advance the interface technologies enabling mobile, automotive, physical AI, IoT and other connected systems
BRIDGEWATER, N.J., October 20, 2026--The MIPI Alliance, an international organization that develops specifications that standardize wired interfaces for mobile and other connected ecosystems, today announced the appointment of Gaurav Arora of Google and Aruni Nelson of Intel Corporation as co-chairs of the MIPI Alliance Board of Directors.
Arora joined the MIPI board as Google's representative in 2024 and has been serving as the interim board chair since July 2026. He is the head of systems architecture for the Google Home and Google Nest Business Unit. In addition to that role, Arora leads software engineering teams in the U.S. and Taiwan at Google and is an industry-wide expert with over 25 years of experience in SoCs and embedded systems for smart home and wearable products.
Nelson joins the board, replacing Thomas Schaeffer as Intel's board representative. Nelson is a principal engineer and platform architect at Intel, with more than two decades of experience in interconnect technologies, systems design, firmware development and open standards leadership. Her deep technical expertise has resulted in numerous patented inventions in connectivity and power-efficient computing. She currently serves as chair of the MIPI Audio and I/O Bridges working groups and co-vice chair of the MIPI I3C Working Group.
"Gaurav and Aruni bring vision, leadership and industry knowledge to the board at an important period of evolution for MIPI," said Peter Lefkin, MIPI Alliance executive director. "The organization's legacy of developing standardized interfaces for mobile has proven extremely relevant and applicable for other markets such as IoT, automotive, industrial and computing, and provides the foundation for helping to enable emerging markets such as physical AI and robotics."
The eight-member MIPI board is made up of four promoter seats and four permanent seats. Other board directors include: Kyung Hyun Ko, Samsung Electronics, Co.; Win Maung, Texas Instruments Incorporated; Licinio Sousa, Synopsys, Inc.; Hiroo Takahashi, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation; Nathalie Vallespin, STMicroelectronics; and Rick Wietfeldt, Qualcomm Incorporated. Peter Lefkin, MIPI Alliance executive director, also serves as secretary on the board as a non-director officer.