Meet the 2010 Speakers

Behrooz Abdi

Behrooz Abdi is a seasoned veteran with over 22 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He joined NetLogic Microsystems from RMI Corporation, where he served as President and CEO. Prior to RMI, Abdi served as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Qualcomm’s CDMA Technologies (QCT), where he was instrumental in driving the transition to 65nm technologies, acquired and integrated several product and technology companies, and moved into the top ten list of semiconductor companies. His last role at Motorola was Vice President and General Manager for the radio products division, where he led Motorola to its number one market position in RF ICs. Abdi received his bachelor of science in Electrical Engineering from Montana State University and his master degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Dr. Stephen Allpress Ph.D.

As Chief Technical Officer, Steve is responsible for the overall strategic development of Icera’s unique soft modem technology and maintains operational responsibility for the modem software Development. Steve is a founder of the company and a member of the Board of Directors.

Steve Allpress holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree and a Ph.D in CDMA communications from the University of Bristol. After finishing his PhD in 1993, he took up a position with Lucent (NYSE: LU), formerly AT&T Bell Laboratories, in the USA, in its cellular infrastructure business unit. Working within its forward-looking organisation, he developed intellectual property for Lucent’s base-station products and made numerous contributions to the development of third generation cellular standards. As technical manager of the “Communications Architecture and Analysis” group he led the development of several generations of Lucent’s CDMA baseband signal processing devices all of which were “first-pass” successes, and significantly outperformed the competition.

In 2000 he joined Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM) in the USA to establish its cellular business, where he developed intellectual property for GSM/EDGE systems. Most recently he was Chief Research Fellow at Toshiba Research Laboratories. Steve is the holder of eighteen issued US patents and has several more patents pending. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a Fellow of the IEE.

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Dr. Sergio Bampi

Dr. Sergio Bampi received the B.Sc in Electronics and the B.Sc. in Physics from the Federal Univ. of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, 1979), and the M.Sc. (1982) and Ph.D. (1986) degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Dr. Bampi consults for CEITEC S.A, his main function is to lead the design team of the wireless chip that will be used in Brazil to connect the country.

Additionally he is a professor at the Informatics Institute at UFRGS University and a Distinguished Lecturer (2009-10) of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He served from 2005 to 2008 as the Technical Director of the Microelectronics Center CEITEC in Brazil.

Dr. Sergio Bampi serves as a consulting role for the Brazilian Program and industrial policies related to the electronics industry. He is currently an advisor and project leader of the Microelectronics and Computer Science Graduate Programs at UFRGS, Brazil most prestigious electronics university. His research includes CMOS IC design and modeling, nano-CMOS devices including FinFets, mixed signal, RF CMOS design, low power digital design, dedicated complex architectures and ASICs for image and video processing.

He has co-authored more than 150 papers in these fields and in MOS devices, circuits, technology and CAD. Sergio Bampi has held the position of President of the Research Funding agency FAPERGS in Brazil (2001-2002), President of the Brazilian Microelectronics Society (2002-2004), and Coordinator of the Graduate Program on Microelectronics at Federal University UFRGS (2003-2007).

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Dr. Craig Barratt

Craig H. Barratt, also known as the "fabless Craig Barratt," has served as president and chief executive officer of Atheros since March 2003, and as a director on the company's Board since May 2003. Under his leadership, Atheros was named "Most Respected Emerging Public Fabless Company" consecutively for 2006 and 2007 by the FSA, now known as the GSA. Prior to joining Atheros in April 2002 as the company’s vice president of technology, Dr. Barratt worked with ArrayComm, Inc., a company specializing in multi-antenna signal processing. From September 1992 to March 2002, he held a number of positions with ArrayComm, including executive vice president and general manager. Dr. Barratt holds Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree and Bachelor of Science degrees in pure mathematics and physics from Sydney University in Australia. During his professional career, Dr. Barratt has earned 23 patents in a variety of wireless and related technologies.

During Craig's brief breaks from the semiconductor business, he enjoys his personal passions for writing code, cycling, and his wife and two sons.

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Robert Blake

Robert Blake is Chief Executive Officer of Octasic Semiconductor, headquartered in Montreal, Canada. Octasic is a leader supplier of highly efficient Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips used for telecom infrastructure equipment in voice, video and cellular baseband processing applications. Prior to Octasic, Mr. Blake worked at Altera as Vice President of Product Planning where he was responsible for defining Altera's programmable logic product solutions. He has been developing ASIC and programmable logic for high speed telecom and network applications for over 17 years. Prior to Altera, he worked at LSI Logic and Fairchild where he developed ASIC technology. He holds a MEng. in Business and Microelectronics and BSc. in Applied Physics & Electronics from the University of Durham in England.

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John Bruggeman

John Bruggeman serves as Cadence senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Bruggeman brings with him more than 20 years of diverse marketing experience working for innovative global companies and is responsible for corporate, product, and strategic marketing activities at Cadence.

Before joining Cadence, Bruggeman was chief marketing officer at Wind River. In that role, he oversaw Wind River's product planning and management, corporate marketing, and field marketing. There he helped the company achieve market leadership and drove the company's entry into new, profitable revenue streams. Prior to joining Wind River, Bruggeman was vice president of marketing at Mercury Interactive Corporation, where he successfully revitalized the marketing organization by defining and creating a new category space. At Mercury, Bruggeman led the company's rebranding efforts and launched a new sales enablement model focused not on products, but on enterprise-wide solutions. Bruggeman has also held a variety of marketing positions at Alventive, America Online, Netscape, Lucent, and Octel Communications. Bruggeman holds a Bachelor of Science degree in statistics and computer science from San Jose State University and a Master of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Connecticut.

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Don Faria

Don Faria, Senior Vice President of the Altera’s worldwide vertical Business Units, is responsible for strategic direction, vertical marketing and technical solution development, partnership programs, and business operations. Altera divides its business into four vertical markets – Communications & Broadcast, Industrial & Automotive, Military, and Consumer/Computer/Storage/Test/Medical. Mr. Faria is also responsible for Altera’s European Trading Company.

Mr. Faria started with Altera in 1984 and is considered one of the pioneers of the PLD industry. During his tenure at Altera, he has held management positions in applications engineering, product planning, marketing, and applications business groups. Prior to Altera, Mr. Faria spent two years at Hewlett-Packard where he was an ASIC engineer. Mr. Faria holds a B.S. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Massachusetts and jointly holds several PLD patents.

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Jack Harding

Jack Harding is president and CEO of eSilicon Corporation and brings more than 25 years of management experience spanning the semiconductor and EDA sectors. Mr. Harding co-founded eSilicon in 2000 and is responsible for eSilicon overall leadership, strategy and management. Several years ago, Mr. Harding introduced a new business model called the Value Chain Producer (VCP) that is today a $1B market segment. In 2009, the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) recognized this new market segment by creating a VCP Board seat.

Mr. Harding is currently on the Board of Directors of RF Micro Devices (NASDAQ: RFMD) and Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) in addition to being the Chairman of eSilicon Corporation

As a GSA board member over the past three years, Mr. Harding led the finance committee and guided the GSA and its membership through turbulent economic times ensuring that there was no loss in member benefits or focus on important programs. He has also served as a key spokesperson for GSA.

Prior to eSilicon, he served as president and CEO of Cadence during which time Cadence achieved the status of world’s largest supplier of EDA software and provided the greatest shareholder value in the history of that company. Mr. Harding entered Cadence upon the acquisition of Cooper & Chyan Technology (CCT), where he served as the president and CEO, and was responsible for leading the company to an IPO. Prior to CCT, Mr. Harding served as the executive vice president of Zycad Corporation. Mr. Harding began his career at IBM.

Mr. Harding has held various directorships in both public and private organizations and served as a member of the prestigious Steering Committee at the U.S. Council on Competiveness and was a former National Academies' Committee member for Software, Growth and the Future of the U.S. Economy.

Mr. Harding is a frequent international speaker on the topics of innovation, entrepreneurship and semiconductor trends and policies. He holds a B.A. from Drew University in Chemistry and Economics and attended the Stern School of Business at New York University.

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Arpit Joshipura

Arpit is currently Ericsson's driver of Convergence Vision and Transformation Strategy to Operators and outbound audience worldwide including Silicon Valley Ecosystem partners. Focus areas include All-IP End to End Convergence across Fixed and Mobile architectures (eg 4G/SAE/EPC, IPTV, Backhaul, Edge, Metro, Applications).

Arpit moved to Ericsson from Redback where he was the VP of Product Management, Marketing, Standards and Solutions (CTO/CMO Role), responsible for the strategic success of Redback's flagship SmartEdge router family and its acquisition through Ericsson. Prior to Redback, Mr. Joshipura was the Vice President of Portfolio Management CIENA/ONI focusing on Metro Ethernet and Optical Architectures. He has also held senior leadership positions in Engineering at Caspian Networks and Nortel Networks.

He has an M.B.A., M.S. in computer engineering from North Carolina State University, B.S. in electrical engineering.

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Dr. Avi Katz

Dr. Avi Katz has spent more than 20 years leading public and private electronics manufacturers in fiercely competitive markets. He has led companies through restructuring and turnaround situations, founded new companies, managed global mergers and acquisitions, formed joint ventures and strategic alliances, and led corporate divestitures. Avi was the Chief Executive Officer of Intransa and Equator Technologies, and has held executive positions in other high-tech companies such as Watkins-Johnson, ASTeX, and Symphony Services.

Prior to becoming an executive, he spent 7 years as a researcher at A&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Avi is a member of the board of directors of several early-stage companies, and of the Israel Venture Network (IVN), a venture philanthropy organization. He holds more than 70 United States and international patents, has published more than 300 technical papers in international technical magazines, and is the author of 10 technical books.

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Sohail Khan

Sohail has spent more than 25 years in the communications and semiconductor industries, establishing an impressive record of building successful global businesses, creating new products and developing new markets. He came to SiGe Semiconductor from Agere Systems where he held various senior management positions including executive vice president, infrastructure systems and executive vice president, strategy and development.

Prior to Agere’s spin-out, he was president of Lucent’s $3 billion integrated circuits business and achieved a leadership positions in telecom, wireless and mass storage ICs. He also spent time at Bessemer Venture Partners as an entrepreneur in residence/operating partner, helping them evaluate new investment opportunities and providing support to portfolio companies. His management experience extends to AT&T, NEC Electronics, and Intel. Today, Sohail sits as director on the boards of LightPath Technologies and GainSpan Corporation. He holds a master of business administration from the University of California at Berkeley, and a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the University of Engineering in Lahore, Pakistan.

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Mr. Brian Markwalter

Brian Markwalter is vice president of research and standards for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®. Mr. Markwalter is responsible for overseeing CEA’s ANSI-accredited standards development operation and extensive market research capability. Under Mr. Markwalter’s direction, CEA hosts more than 70 committees, subcommittees and working groups that produce standards used in millions of consumer devices. CEA’s market research has a rich 75 year history producing objective research, tracking sales data and forecasting trends. These programs have resulted in three Technology Emmy awards for CEA standards and give CEA members free access to nearly $1 million in annual market research.

Markwalter received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and is a licensed professional engineer.

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Andreas Melder

Andy joined Gigle Networks in November 2009 and serves as the vice president of business development. Andy has more than 30 years of experience working with semiconductor leaders in fast-growing consumer broadband communications markets.

He helped three companies achieve successful financial exits over the past 10 years, either as a founder or member of the executive leadership team. He also advised and was an investor in Flarion, successfully having been acquired by Qualcomm in 2006.

Prior to joining Gigle Networks, Melder held the SVP Sales, Marketing and Business Development position at Intellon, leading up to the company's 2007 initial public offering and its recent acquisition by Atheros Communications. Prior to that, Melder co-founded Microtune, Inc., where he was vice president of sales and marketing and, later, vice president of business development. He came to Microtune from Tripath Technologies, where he was vice president of sales, marketing and corporate business development, and a member of the leadership team that executed the company's successful public offering. Melder holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Business from Carnegie-Mellon University, and a Master of Science degree in Operations Research and Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University.

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Rajiv Ramaswami

The Infrastructure and Networking Group, headed by Rajiv Ramaswami, is responsible for all Ethernet controller, switching and physical layer products, optical solutions, storage products, security and embedded processors. The Group's products and technologies are targeted to enterprise, wide area network (WAN), metropolitan, small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) and small office/home office (SOHO) markets. End products offered by this Group include Ethernet controllers for notebooks, desktops and servers; storage silicon solutions; and physical layer devices, optical solutions, switches, security and embedded processors for Layer 2 to Layer 7 switches, routers and security appliances - equipment that delivers and manages the flow of voice, video and data services within and across networks.

Mr. Ramaswami joined Broadcom and was named Executive Vice President & General Manager, Infrastructure and Networking Group in February 2010. Mr. Ramaswami was previously at Cisco Systems, Inc. where he most recently served as Vice President and General Manager of the Cloud Services and Switching Technology Group. Mr. Ramaswami joined Cisco in 2002 and served as Vice President and General Manager for a variety of Business Units in Optical, Switching, and Storage Networking. Prior to Cisco, Mr. Ramaswami held various technical and leadership positions at Xros, Tellabs and IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center.

Mr. Ramaswami holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and a B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. He holds 33 U.S. patents primarily in optical networking, and has coauthored a textbook "Optical Networks: A Practical Perspective". He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras.

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Jagdish Rebello

Jagdish is a principal analyst with the iSuppli Market Intelligence team and works within the Application Markets and Application-Specific Devices Practice. His responsibilities include development of research and competitive analysis of various optical and opto-electronic components, wireless infrastructure and applications in optical networking communications. He also provides insights into emerging optical and wireless technologies such as Passive Optical Networks and WiMAX, while assessing their market impact.

Jagdish Rebello also directs the iSuppli India research initiative and analyzes the rapidly growing demand for consumer, automotive and wireless electronics in India as well as the emerging supply of electronic design and integration capabilities in India.

Prior to iSuppli, Jagdish worked with ADC Telecommunications as a Product Manager for several photonic components, directing the strategic and tactical marketing of MEMS switches, FBGs, optical couplers and WDMs - all specific to the telecommunications market. Jagdish also successfully managed the optical spectroscopic detector line for Jobin Yvon, Inc.

Jagdish has a PhD and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio State University, a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Marketing from Rutgers University, and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bombay.

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Mr. Arthur Reidel

For 25 years Art Reidel has helped build and scale profitable businesses in the electronic design automation, pharmaceutical software, semiconductor, and communications industries. He was co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Pharsight Corporation (now part of Tripos International), the leader in modeling and simulation for pharmaceutical development, and he led its IPO in August 2000. Art has held executive positions with technology-based companies Sunrise Test Systems (acquired by Viewlogic Systems), where he served as its president and chief executive officer; Weitek; Interactive Training Systems, and Schlumberger Computer-Aided Systems. In addition to his management roles, Art is well connected to the investment community. Most recently, Art was a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he provided management assistance to portfolio companies and was responsible for several new investments. He earlier served as a general partner at ABS Venture Limited Partnerships, where he invested in and was a director of numerous technology-based companies. Art has a BS in Mathematics from MIT.

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Jodi Shelton

Jodi Shelton is the co-founder and president of GSA. A pioneer within the technology space, Shelton was instrumental in the creation of the Alliance and has continuously addressed global issues in the industry as the voice of its members. Under her leadership, GSA has grown its membership to include companies throughout the supply chain representing 25 countries across the globe. In her role as president, Shelton oversees GSA daily operations, ensuring that the Alliance remains focused on achieving its defined mission and goal to foster a more effective ecosystem through collaboration, integration and innovation. She is the key liaison between GSA and the business community at high-level financial and industry conferences, providing insight on key topics pertaining to the global fabless supply chain. Shelton earned her bachelor's degree in political science from San Diego State University and her master's degree in political science from the University of Houston.

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Dr. Naveed Sherwani

Dr. Sherwani brings over 23 years of experience in technical engineering and general management to his position as President and CEO of Open-Silicon. Prior to co-founding Open-Silicon, Dr. Sherwani was the founder and General Manager of Intel Microelectronics Services where he led efforts to promote the use of disciplined ASIC methodologies to improve design efficiency and time-to-market.

Naveed co-architected the Intel microprocessor design methodology and environment that has been used in various leading microprocessors. Prior to joining Intel, he worked as a consultant for various telecommunications and computer companies, mainly focusing on ASIC design flow and cell library design to improve time-to-market. He also served as a Professor at Western Michigan University, where his research concentrated on VLSI Physical Design Automation, combinatorics, and graph algorithms.

Dr. Sherwani is the author of the main textbook on Physical Design, which is widely used at major universities around the world. In addition, he has authored or co-authored 3 books and over 100 articles on various aspects of Physical Design Automation and ASICs.

In last 15 years, he has been a frequent speaker at DAC, ICCAD, International Conference on VLSI and other major conferences around the world.

Dr. Sherwani received his Ph.D from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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Nigel Toon

Nigel Toon joined picoChip from Icera, which he co-founded in 2002. While there he was responsible for sales and marketing and was a member of the Board of Directors. He played a key role in growing Icera into a global leader in wireless technology. Prior to founding Icera, Mr Toon served at Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR), latterly as Vice President and Managing Director for the company's European business unit; a post he assumed in 1998, having previously held the roles of Managing Director, Marketing Director, Regional Sales Manager and Field Applications Engineer. Mr Toon's early career included business development and engineering roles with Standard Microsystems, Memec PLC and GEC. He studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Heriot Watt University and is a Member of the IEEE.

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