Daily News Briefs

M. Hani Badawi was named vice president of applications engineering at AXT Inc., a Fremont, Calif., manufacturer of substrates and raw materials for the compound semiconductor industry. He will oversee customer support for AXT's substrate products. Badawi has worked in applications engineering at AXT since early 2004. He was formerly vice president of engineering at AmberWave Systems Corp., and was director of operations at Epitronics/ATMI Services III-V Division. . . . Yuichi Kawakami was appointed president and CEO of NEC Electronics America Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif., effective April 1. He has held a variety of executive management positions in his more than 30 years at NEC Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp., most recently as vice president of NEC Electronics Corp.'s sales and marketing operations unit. Kawakami succeeds Toshio Nakajima, who will return to NEC Electronics Corp., in Japan, to be a corporate officer overseeing system LSI business development. He will retain a seat on the NEC Electronics board and will become chairman of the board at NEC Electronics America.