Nanotechnology nonprofit think tank Foresight Nanotech Institute of Palo Alto, Calif., has appointed Marc Lurie as its president. Prior to joining Foresight, Lurie founded and served as CEO of @hand, a software and services company. Lurie succeeds Scott Mize, who returned to his for-profit career. . . . Cypress Semiconductor Corp. of San Jose, Calif., and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (Grace) of Shanghai, China, have entered into a strategic foundry partnership. Under the terms of the deal, Cypress will transfer its programmable system-on-chip (PSoC) mixed-signal array, CMOS image sensor, wireless USB and PC clock process technologies used in consumer and computer devices to Grace in return for preferential volume access to Grace's foundry capacity. Cypress says it expects the move to increase its overall capacity by an additional 15,000 wafer starts per month by the fourth quarter of 2007. Qualification of the first product is scheduled for the beginning of the third quarter of 2006 in Grace's 8-in. facility in Shanghai; Grace will start production with the PSoC mixed-signal array. . . . Greater China Corp. (GCC) has agreed to sell its wholly owned Unigel (HK) Ltd. subsidiary back to the original owners of the company. Unigel owns a 60 percent interest in Sutco, a fiber-optic gel company located in Shenzhen, China. In exchange for Unigel, GCC will receive back all of its shares that were associated with the combination of GCC and Unigel (approximately 17.5 million shares out of approximately 30 million shares outstanding). In addition, Unigel will assume all GCC debt which was incurred to finance the activities of Unigel. An official closing is expected to take place within the next two weeks. . . . Oxford, UK-based Infinitesima Ltd., a maker of products for atomic force microscopy (AFM), has formed a partnership with KLA-Tencor's Growth and Emerging Markets Div. to distribute its products, including the VideoAFM video-rate atomic force microscope, to selected markets. Under the terms of the agreement, KLA-Tencor will distribute the VideoAFM in North America and Europe. KLA-Tencor is a provider of process control solutions for semiconductor manufacturing and related industries and has its headquarters in San Jose, Calif.