Board Members & Advisors
BOARD OF DIRECTORS:
Dr. Venkat Rayapati (Chairman of the Board of Directors)
Vijayasri Rayapati (Member of the Board of Directors)
Tomas Isaksson
Tomas Isaksson is presently working as President & CEO at Venturi Wireless. He has over 28 years of international telecommunications industry experience. Before joining Venturi, Mr. Isaksson spent 11 years at Vodafone. Most recently, he was chief executive and chairman of the management board of Vodafone USA, a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group. During his tenure at Vodafone, Mr. Isaksson served on the Verizon Wireless board of directors, was chief executive of the Americas Region and chief executive officer of Europolitan Holdings AB, a Swedish mobile operator. Prior to joining Vodafone, Mr. Isaksson had a 16-year career at Ericsson where he held a number of senior leadership positions, including president and chief executive officer of Ericsson Radio Systems Inc. Isaksson is a graduate of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He has served on the boards of a number of public and private mobile telecommunications companies, including Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Americas, Europolitan Holdings AB (Sweden), Insacell (Mexico), and Telecel (Portugal).
BOARD ADVISORS:
Jai P. Bhagat
Jai Bhagat is a long time pioneer in wireless communications. Since August 2003, Jai Bhagat has been a Director and Vice Chairman of Axesstel, Inc. (AMEX: AFT), a developer of fixed-wireless voice and data products for the worldwide telecommunications market. In 2000, he founded AIR2LAN, a broadband service provider that was merged with US Wireless OnLine in 2005. Previously, he was a co-founder of SkyTel Communications, Inc., where he served as Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer prior to SkyTel's merger with MCI. Mr. Bhagat also served as Chairman of the License Exempt sector of the Wireless Communications Association International (WCA) trade association, which represents the broadband wireless industry. He has served as Chairman and a board member of both the Personal Communications Industry Association (PCIA) and American Mobile Satellite Corporation. In addition, Mr. Bhagat has served as a board member or chairman of several wireless communications based companies, and was inducted into the RCR Wireless Hall of Fame in 2002 for his significant contributions to the wireless industry. Past industry awards include the PCIA Chairman's Award, the Radio Club Sarnoff Citation, PCIA’s Technology and Innovation of the Year, and RCR's Personality of the Year. Mr. Bhagat received an M.S.in Electrical Engineering from Howard University, a B.S. in electrical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India, and completed the Executive Management program at Stanford University.
Stephen B. Weinstein
Stephen B. Weinstein, an IEEE Life Fellow, received his SB, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T., the University of Michigan, and the University of California at Berkeley. His career was mainly with Bell Laboratories, Bellcore (now Telcordia), and NEC Research Labs America. Now an independent consultant (Communication Theory & Technology Consulting LLC), he works for major law firms on technical aspects of patent litigation, and for industrial clients on topics such as optical/wireless integration.
Dr. Weinstein's expertise includes both physical level and networking technologies. He invented the echo cancellation technique used in voice band modems and pioneered the application of the Fast Fourier Transform to OFDM/DMT modulation, a technique widely used in ADSL, IEEE 802.11 "Wi-Fi", IEEE 802.16 "WiMax", and coming generations of cellular mobile systems. He wrote the book "Getting the Picture: A Guide to CATV and the New Electronic Media (IEEE Press, 1986), is co-author of the textbook "Data Communication Principles" (Plenum, 1992), and is the author of "The Multimedia Internet" (Springer, 2005) that provides a light technical introduction to the communication networks and technologies, Internet protocols and services, and media compression technologies contributing to the quality of audio/video media on the Internet.
He served as President (1996-97) of the IEEE Communications Society and Division III Director (2002-2003) on the IEEE Board. He has held many other positions in IEEE including Chair of the IEEE Press Board, member of the IEEE Nominations and Elections Committee and member of the IEEE Fellow Committee. He is currently Chair of the IEEE Honorary Member Award Committee and is the IEEE Communication Society's Chief Information Officer. His publications and conferences activities include co-founding the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, serving as co-program chair of three IEEE CAS/COM intersociety conferences, and serving as Program Chair for the 2004 IEEE Wireless Communication and Networking Conference (WCNC). He received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984 and the IEEE Second Millennium Medal in 2000. He is the recipient of the Eduard Rhein Foundation's (Germany) 2006 Basic Research Award for his pioneering work in OFDM.
Professor S. Sitharama Iyengar
Professor S. Sitharama Iyengar, a computer scientist of international repute, is a pioneer in the field of distributed sensor networks, computational aspects of robotics, and many real-time critical event applications. Iyengar is best known for introducing novel data structures & Algorithms both Parallel and distributed for large scale computations in sensor technologies and image processing applications and for detecting critical events in Large Scale systems. He has also been a advisor to over 40 Ph.D. Students, 100 Master’s students and a mentor to large number of students all over the world.
One of Iyengar's landmark contributions is the development of grid coverage for surveillance and target location in distributed sensor networks published in IEEE Transaction on Computers in 2002. Iyengar has also explored the role of game theory in sensor networks. Iyengar’s foundational work has been transitioned into unique technologies. His technology to organize and access information on the Web was featured in the World’s Best Technology Showcase held May 14-15, 2007 in Arlington, Texas.
He is currently the Roy Paul Daniels Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science and is the founder and director of the Robotics Research Laboratory at Louisiana State University. He has been a Visiting Professor or Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory, and has been awarded the Satish Dhawan Visiting Chaired Professorship at the Indian Institute of Science, the Homi Bhaba Visiting Chaired Professor (IGCAR), and the University of Paris - Sorbonne. He has been a visiting professor at University of Bonn, Asia University in Taiwan and has been in the advisory board for many universities, foundations and Governments.
Further, Iyengar is the founding Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks and has been an Associate Editor for IEEE Transaction on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering, and guest Editor of IEEE Computer Magazine and has been on the Editorial Member as an Advisory role of many IEEE journals.
Iyengar has been a PI/Co-PI on many NSF, DARPA, and MURI funded projects and has been an active participant in numerous government sponsored studies. He has chaired many international conferences on Distributed Sensor Networks and has been on many programming committees on sensor networks around the world. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from some universities in India.
Iyengar is a Member of the European Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Fellow of the Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS). He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Science. In 1998, he was awarded the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award and is an IEEE Golden Core Member. Professor Iyengar is an IEEE Distinguished Visitor, SIAM Distinguished Lecturer, and ACM National Lecturer. In 2006, his paper entitled, A Fast Parallel Thinning Algorithm for the Binary Image Skeletonization, was the most frequently read article in the month of January in the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. Professor Iyengar earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Bangalore University and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and a doctoral degree from Miss. State University.
Iyengar has published over 400 research papers in journals and conferences and he has authored, co-authored, or edited 14 texts in the areas of parallel algorithms, sensor networks, wavelets, robotics, and computer modeling of complex biological systems. He has won many Best-Paper Awards sponsored by international conferences and his research publications are on data structures, robotics, parallel computing, and sensor networks.
