2015 IFCS-EFTF Entrepreneurs Forum
Tuesday, April 14, 10:50am-12:30pm, Room 103/105
The IEEE Frequency Control Society and European Frequency Time Forum is full of entrepreneurial spirit. Many of our society members are the catalysts behind the state-of-the-art research that has led to new commercial products. Their products are making major impacts on our daily lives. This year we have the great honor of inviting four highly successful entrepreneurs to share their valuable experiences through their ventures in the frequency and timing area. This is a must-attend event for those of you interested in engaging with these leading entrepreneurs in the field. The panelists will be prompted to answer the following questions:
- What were you working on? How did you spot the opportunity? What made you to start a new venture?
- Why did you "believe"?
- How did you leverage the resources for your development? People, money, equipment... etc.
- What was the biggest challenge you faced in development phase?
- What was the biggest failure/mistake? How did you resolve the situation?
- What core step did you get right, either by plan or by accident?
- Did you adjust company strategy along the way?
- How did you market your products?
- What was your interaction with customers? Did they want exactly what you developed?
- What is the need for future timing and frequency control industry? What would you recommend young engineers to do?
Panelists
Lute Maleki - Founder, President and CEO of OEWaves
Lute Maleki is the President and CEO of OEwaves, Inc. Prior to joining OEwaves he was a Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where he created and led the Quantum Sciences and Technologies Group for over 23 years. His research areas of interest at JPL included development of atomic clocks based on ion traps and laser cooled trapped atoms; ultra-stable photonic oscillators, the opto-electronic oscillator (OEO), and photonic signal distribution systems; study and development of whispering gallery mode microresonators and their applications; development of sensors based on atom wave interferometers; and tests of fundamental physics with clocks. He is an inventor of over 50 U.S. Patents and applications, and has authored and co-authored over 120 refereed publications, and over 200 conference proceedings. Dr. Maleki is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. Lute Maleki holds a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics. He has received the IEEE Rabi Award, IEEE Sawyer Award and NASA’s Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal for the development of the Trapped Ion Standard.
Aaron Partridge - Co-founder, Chief Scientist of SiTime
Aaron Partridge is Founder and Chief Scientist of SiTime Corp where he guides the technological direction. SiTime was founded in 2005 to develop MEMS-based timing references. From 2001 through 2004, Dr. Partridge was Project Manager at Robert Bosch Research and Technology Center, where he coordinated the MEMS resonator and packaging research. From 1987 through 1991 he was a founder and Chief Scientist of Atomis, Inc., a manufacturer of STM, AFM, and BEEM (Scanning Tunneling, Atomic Force, and Ballistic Emission Electron) Microscopes. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1996, 1999 and 2003. His thesis delivered MEMS accelerometers for the NASA X-33 space plane and the first thin-film encapsulated piezoresistive accelerometers. Dr. Partridge has authored and co-authored 30 scientific papers and holds 60 patents. He serves on the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Imagers, MEMS, Medical and Displays Subcommittee, is the Editorial Chair of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium, and is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.
Ulrich Rohde - Chairman of Synergy Microwave Corp.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Dr. h.c. mult. Ulrich L. Rohde is the Chairman of Synergy Microwave Corp., Paterson, New Jersey; President of Communications Consulting Corporation, serving as an honorary member of the Senate of the Department of Defense University Munich, honorary member of the Senate of the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg, Germany; past member of the Board of Directors of Ansoft Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and is a partner of Rohde & Schwarz, Munich, Germany. Prior to being appointed Honorary Professor of RF and Microwave Technologies at the University of Cottbus, Dr. Rohde was appointed Visiting Professor of RF and Microwave Technologies in November 2001 at the University of Cottbus, Germany, was member of the staff at George Washington University (1982) and as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, teaching in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences departments gave numerous lectures worldwide regarding communications theory and digital frequency synthesizers. He is also a full professor at the University of Oradea. Dr. Rohde has published more than 300 scientific papers in professional journals and several books and book chapters, and several dozen patents. Dr. Rohde is a member of the following: Fellow Member of the IEEE, Member of the IEEE Technical Committee for HF, VHF, and UHF Technology MTT- 17, Member of the IEEE Signal Generation and Frequency Conversion MTT-22, Member of the Board of Trustees Fraunhofer Gesellchaft (EMFT) for Modular Solid State Technology, Member of the Board of Trustees of the Bavarian Academy of Science, and Honorary Member of the Academy of Science, all in Munich, ETA KAPPA NU Honor Society, Executive Association of the Graduate School of Business- Columbia University, New York, The Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association, Fellow of the Radio Club of America, former Chairman of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Board at New Jersey Institute of Technology, IFCS C. B. Sawyer Award recipient, Honorary Professor at IIT Delhi, India, Chief Judge of IEEE IMS 2014 Student Design Competition, and Ph.D. Defense Committee Member at UCLA and Drexel University.
His hobbies are sailing, U.S. Merchant Marine Officer, Master of Steam or Motor Vessels, photography and licensed amateur ham radio operator since 1956 (N1UL).
Richard Ruby - Pioneer in FBAR Technologies
Rich Ruby obtained his B.S., MS., and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1977, 1981, and 1984, respectively. His PhD work was in superconductivity. After his graduate work, he joined HP Labs (later to become Agilent Labs, and now Avago Technologies) working on superconductivity, E-beam lithography, X-Ray lithography and packaging. In 1993, he started a project on Free Standing Bulk Acoustic Wave Resonator devices (FBAR) and has stayed with that technology since. He has made many contributions to the development and innovations centered on the acoustic properties, manufacturability and the packaging of FBAR filters and duplexers. Rich was instrumental in commercializing the first FBAR duplexers HPMD7901 and the 7904 in 2001 to 2003. His innovations also led to the first all-silicon, chip-scale packaged FBAR duplexer (the ACMD 7401) introduced in 2004. Today roughly 1.5 to 2 billion FBAR and BAW filters are sold worldwide into the mobile market every year. He was made an Agilent Fellow in 2002 and holds that title as well as Director of Technology at Avago. Rich was also awarded the Barney Oliver Prize, the Bill Hewlett Award, and the CB Sawyer Award for his work on FBAR technology. Rich was made IEEE Fellow in 2010. Rich has over to 80 patents and patents pending in the area of FBAR devices and has given numerous invited papers. FBAR has since won several industrial