Dr. Henry Samueli
GSA is honored to announce Dr. Henry Samueli, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Broadcom Corporation as the 2011 Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award winner.
After earning his Ph.D. degree from UCLA in 1980, Dr. Samueli spent his early career designing military broadband communications systems at TRW, Inc. He subsequently moved on, in 1985, to become an electrical engineering professor at UCLA, where he led a research program in the area of advanced digital communications architectures and circuits. His team achieved many breakthrough developments by proving that low-cost CMOS technologies (1.0um in those days) could be used to implement all the key digital, analog and RF building blocks to enable multi-hundred Mbit/sec digital communications transceivers operating at GHz RF frequencies.
Dr. Samueli subsequently founded Broadcom in 1991 with one of his Ph.D. students, Henry Nicholas. In the early days the company pioneered the U.S. cable industry’s transition to digital television by creating the world’s first broadband digital cable transmission solution, which ultimately expanded and evolved into one of Broadcom’s major business areas today, encompassing a complete portfolio of technologies for the digital home. Another early project involved the development of the industry’s first all-digital CMOS implementation of a Fast Ethernet transceiver. This pioneering work launched Broadcom into its second major business segment, which today encompasses a complete portfolio of transmission and switching technologies for the infrastructure and networking market.
Another significant innovation that was leveraged from the UCLA research program was the development of high-performance Radio Frequency (RF) technology produced using standard bulk digital CMOS and, more importantly, demonstrating the ability to integrate these sensitive RF circuits on the same substrate as high-speed digital basebands. This pioneering work enabled Broadcom to introduce the world’s first true single-chip all-CMOS implementations of both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless transceivers, which has evolved into Broadcom’s third major business segment today, encompassing a complete portfolio of RF and baseband technologies for the cellular and wireless connectivity markets.
Dr. Samueli’s dedication and leadership extends well beyond Broadcom, with his service and influence being felt throughout the research, university and start-up communities. Although full-time at Broadcom since 1995, Dr. Samueli has maintained his professorship (on-leave) in electrical engineering at UCLA, and a distinguished adjunct professorship in electrical engineering and computer science at UC Irvine. He also serves on the UC President’s Board on Science and Innovation and is on the Chancellor’s Advisory Councils at both UCLA and UC Irvine. He also chairs the Dean’s Advisory Councils of both the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine.
In 2000, Dr. Samueli was awarded the University of California Presidential Medal, the UC Irvine Medal, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Industrial Pioneer Award, as well as the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science Alumnus of the Year. Dr. Samueli was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2000, a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2003, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. In 2005 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the Edward A. Dickson Alumnus of the Year from UCLA. In 2006 he received the IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Industry Leaders Award, and in 2010 he received the UCLA Medal.
Henry and his wife Susan are active philanthropists, having created the Samueli Foundation after Broadcom’s IPO in 1998. The Samueli’s also own the Anaheim Ducks National Hockey League club, which won the Stanley Cup Championship in 2007.