Panelist Bios:
Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, which has appeared every Thursday since 1991.
He is also the co-creator and co-producer of the technology industry's most prestigious annual conference, D: All Things Digital, and is the co-executive editor of the technology web site, allthingsd.com, which extends the experience of the D Conference to the Web. In both ventures, he partners with the prominent blogger and author, Kara Swisher.
In addition to Personal Technology, Mr. Mossberg also writes the Mossberg's Mailbox column in the Journal, and edits the Mossberg Solution column, which is authored by his colleague Katherine Boehret.
He appears regularly on television and Internet video as a commentator on technology issues. He is a weekly contributor to the Fox Business Network, and has been interviewed repeatedly on programs like Charlie Rose and The News Hour, as well as on National Public Radio.
The Washington Post has declared Mr. Mossberg "one of the most powerful men in the high-tech world" and "a one-man media empire whose prose can launch a new product." And the New York Times calls him a "protean critic of the new economy's tools and toys."
In a major profile of Mr. Mossberg, entitled "The Kingmaker," Wired Magazine declared: "Few reviewers have held so much power to shape an industry's successes and failures…Chances are he has influenced the look, feel and performance of your laptop, mobile phone, and MP3 player."
In 2007, The New Yorker magazine profiled him in an article entitled: “Everyone listens to Walter Mossberg.” In 2008, Vanity Fair magazine listed him as a member of its "New Establishment" list of the 100 top leaders of the Information Age.
Mr. Mossberg was awarded the Loeb award for Commentary, the only technology writer to be so honored. He has also won the National Headliner Award, the World Technology Award for Media and Journalism, and has been inducted into the ranks of the Business News Luminaries, the hall of fame for business journalists.
He is a trustee of Brandeis University and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Rhode Island.
Mr. Mossberg is based in the Journal's Washington, D.C., office, where he spent 18 years covering national and international affairs before turning his attention to technology. A native of Warwick, Rhode Island, he holds degrees from Brandeis and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Ralph de la Vega
CEO-AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets
Ralph de la Vega, CEO-AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, was named to his current role in October 2008. Today, he leads all consumer marketing, sales, content and converged services, customer care and operations for wireless and wired.
Previously, he served as President and CEO-AT&T Mobility where he was responsible for all of AT&T’s wireless business since October 2007.
Prior to that, he served as group president-Regional Telecommunications and Entertainment, with responsibility for overall leadership in regional wired, including consumer, regional business sales and network. He was appointed to that post in January 2007, after the close of the AT&T-BellSouth merger, which consolidated ownership of Cingular.
From 2004-2006, de la Vega served as chief operating officer of Cingular Wireless, with responsibility for technology planning, network operations, marketing, sales and customer care.
Before joining Cingular in January 2004, he served as president-BellSouth Latin America, with overall responsibility for BellSouth's operations in 11 countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil and Guatemala.
He also has served as BellSouth's president of Broadband and Internet Services. In this position, he had overall responsibility for the deployment, marketing and operations of broadband services. In addition, he had responsibility for BellSouth Internet Services and BellSouth's rapidly growing data support groups.
Mr. de la Vega started his career in 1974 with BellSouth (then Southern Bell) as a management assistant. He has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in Network Planning, Consumer Services, Engineering and Operations — including a rotational assignment at Telcordia (Bellcore) — and was responsible for all BellSouth Telecommunications Network Operations in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Mr. de la Vega's involvement with the community is extensive. He is a member of the Board of Directors of both Junior Achievement Worldwide and the Boy Scouts of America. He plays a leadership role in helping both organizations recruit Hispanic youth. He recently was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s prestigious Alumni Hall of Fame which honors select Hispanics for their personal achievements, contributions and service to America.
A native of Cuba, he holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Florida Atlantic University and a master’s degree in business administration from Northern Illinois University, and he has completed the Executive Program at the University of Virginia.
As of Sept. 29, 2008
Dr. Phillip Alvelda,
Serial Entrepreneur
Chairman and Founder, the Westminster Institute for Science Education
Founder and Board Member, MobiTV
alvelda@wiseteachers.org
p 510.499.8459
Dr. Alvelda is the Founder and Chairman of the non-profit Westminster Institute for Science Education [WISE], and the thought-leader behind the WISE Labs collaborative approach to K-12 STEM education reform. WISE was founded to extend and enrich K-12 science, technology, and engineering education nationwide by enabling students of all ages to perform scientific inquiry and engineering development of their own instead of simply hearing about how others have done so in classroom lectures or cook-book style labs. WISE customizes programs on a school-by-school basis by leveraging the faculty, student, and alumni networks of local universities with the philanthropic support of local businesses. The institute's primary goal is to harness each community's enlightened self-interest in systematically and purposely training students to be creative and innovative in their explorations of 21st century challenges.
Prior to founding WISE, Dr. Alvelda was the founding CEO of MobiTV, Inc., now the world's leading provider of live television, video-on-demand and digital music over mobile and broadband networks. Dr. Alvelda led the team that took the idea of "rich media delivery over wireless networks" from concept to market leadership with the world's first live television experience over mobile phones. Under Dr. Alvelda's leadership from November 1999 through April 2007, the Company created an entirely new media distribution channel, now called mobile television. Since MobiTV's debut on Sprint in November 2003, Dr. Alvelda grew the Emmy® Award winning service to more than two million paying subscribers through expansion into several international markets, and launched a broadband PC version of the service in partnership with AT&T. The company now has over 4 million paying subscribers, making MobiTV the high-technology industry leader in converged media delivery services and the 8th largest television provider in the US, a remarkable feat accomplished in under five years. Dr. Alvelda and his team were awarded an Emmy Award by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, selected by Fast Company as the US's 15th most influential high technology entrepreneur, and granted numerous other technology and industry leadership awards from AlwaysOn, CNET, Fierce-Wireless, Frost & Sullivan, Mobile Entertainment (One of the top 20 most influential New Media Executives), Red Herring and other influencers for innovation and market leadership. He is a regular invited speaker at most media, telecom, and entrepreneurial industry events and conferences including the World Economic Forum where he was chosen as a "Technology Pioneer" in 2007. Dr. Alvelda continues to serve on MobiTV's Board of Directors.
Prior to MobiTV, Dr. Alvelda was the founding CEO and CTO of The MicroDisplay Corporation, a manufacturer of ultra-high resolution miniature displays for portable systems and low cost HDTVs based on the technology he invented as part of his MIT Ph.D. dissertation. MicroDisplay was initially founded based on an $11 million DARPA contract for which Dr. Alvelda was the Principle Investigator. Prior to MicroDisplay, Dr. Alvelda attended graduate school at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he applied for, and won, a $6M grant from DARPA for which he was the Lead Investigator. The grant to develop VLSI Microdisplay Technologies ultimately became the foundation for his first company.
Prior to receiving his PH.D degree from MIT, Dr. Alvelda joined the South Pasadena High School in 1989 where he was an award-winning Physics and Math teacher. He was selected as the top teacher in California's Knowledge Bowl Competition (5th in the Nation), and went on to design and implement a unique hands-on exploratory AP Physics curriculum. Dr. Alvelda has been continuously involved in K-12 and Undergraduate education since 1989 first through teaching positions in graduate school at MIT, and later through ongoing sponsorship and mentoring of high school and undergraduates in corporate internships, and most recently as a Trustee and board member of K-12 schools.
Prior to South Pasadena High School, Dr. Alvelda was a developer of spacecraft hardware and software systems, and new sensing & computing architectures at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was twice-awarded the highly-coveted and competitive Director's Discretionary Research Grant to conduct independent research on both satellite navigation systems and audio signal processing technology based on human neurology. Dr. Alvelda also was one of the engineers who designed and built a series of star and target tracking sensors that flew on the Space Shuttle Astros Ultraviolet Astronomy missions as well as the Galileo and Magellan interplanetary spacecraft.
Dr. Alvelda holds over 15 patents and patents pending on a wide range of technologies, a technical Emmy Award, a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Cornell University, and Masters and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Professor Joy Laskar
Schlumberger Chair in Microelectronics
Director Georgia Electronic Design Center
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Phone: 404-894-5268
Email: joy.laskar@ece.gatech.edu
Dr. Joy Laskar received his B.S. degree (Computer Engineering with Math/Physics Minors, summa cum laude) from Clemson University and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 1995, Dr. Laskar was a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
At Georgia Tech he holds the Schlumberger Chair in Microelectronics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also Founder and Director of the Georgia Electronic Design Center, and he heads a research group of 70 members (graduate students, research staff and administration) with a focus on integration of high-frequency mixed-signal electronics for next-generation wireless and wire line systems. Between 1995 and summer 2008 Dr. Laskar graduated 34 Ph.D. students. He has authored or co-authored more than 500 papers, several book chapters and three books (with another book in development). He has given numerous invited talks, and he has more than 40 patents issued or pending.
In 1998 Dr. Laskar co-founded an advanced WLAN IC Company: RF Solutions, which is now part of Anadgics (Nasdaq: Anad). In 2001 he co-founded a next-generation analog CMOS IC Company, Quellan, which is developing collaborative signal-processing solutions for the enterprise, video, storage and wireless markets. Since 2003, he has worked very closely with Samsung to establish its North American Design Center in Atlanta.
Dr. Laskar’s honors include the Army Research Office’s Young Investigator Award in 1995, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award in 1996, NSF Packaging Research Center Faculty of the Year in 1997, and co-recipient of the IEEE Rappaport Award (Best IEEE Electron Devices Society Journal Paper) in 1999. He was faculty advisor for the 2000 IEEE MTT IMS Best Student Paper award, was Georgia Tech Faculty Graduate Student Mentor of the year in 2001, received a 2002 IBM Faculty Award, and the 2003 Clemson University College of Engineering Outstanding Young Alumni Award. He was the 2003 recipient of the Outstanding Young Engineer award of the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society and was named an IEEE Fellow in 2005. For the 2004-2006 term, Dr. Laskar served as an IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer and currently is an IEEE EDS Distinguished Lecturer. He received Georgia Tech’s “Outstanding Faculty Research Author” award in 2007 and ECE’s Distinguished Mentor Award in 2008. Dr. Laskar served as General Chairman of the IEEE International Microwave Symposium 2008 and will serve as an elected member of the IEEE MTT-S Administrative Committee.
Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, which has appeared every Thursday since 1991.
He is also the co-creator and co-producer of the technology industry's most prestigious annual conference, D: All Things Digital, and is the co-executive editor of the technology web site, allthingsd.com, which extends the experience of the D Conference to the Web. In both ventures, he partners with the prominent blogger and author, Kara Swisher.
In addition to Personal Technology, Mr. Mossberg also writes the Mossberg's Mailbox column in the Journal, and edits the Mossberg Solution column, which is authored by his colleague Katherine Boehret.
He appears regularly on television and Internet video as a commentator on technology issues. He is a weekly contributor to the Fox Business Network, and has been interviewed repeatedly on programs like Charlie Rose and The News Hour, as well as on National Public Radio.
The Washington Post has declared Mr. Mossberg "one of the most powerful men in the high-tech world" and "a one-man media empire whose prose can launch a new product." And the New York Times calls him a "protean critic of the new economy's tools and toys."
In a major profile of Mr. Mossberg, entitled "The Kingmaker," Wired Magazine declared: "Few reviewers have held so much power to shape an industry's successes and failures…Chances are he has influenced the look, feel and performance of your laptop, mobile phone, and MP3 player."
In 2007, The New Yorker magazine profiled him in an article entitled: “Everyone listens to Walter Mossberg.” In 2008, Vanity Fair magazine listed him as a member of its "New Establishment" list of the 100 top leaders of the Information Age.
Mr. Mossberg was awarded the Loeb award for Commentary, the only technology writer to be so honored. He has also won the National Headliner Award, the World Technology Award for Media and Journalism, and has been inducted into the ranks of the Business News Luminaries, the hall of fame for business journalists.
He is a trustee of Brandeis University and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Rhode Island.
Mr. Mossberg is based in the Journal's Washington, D.C., office, where he spent 18 years covering national and international affairs before turning his attention to technology. A native of Warwick, Rhode Island, he holds degrees from Brandeis and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Ralph de la VegaCEO-AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets
Ralph de la Vega, CEO-AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, was named to his current role in October 2008. Today, he leads all consumer marketing, sales, content and converged services, customer care and operations for wireless and wired.
Previously, he served as President and CEO-AT&T Mobility where he was responsible for all of AT&T’s wireless business since October 2007.
Prior to that, he served as group president-Regional Telecommunications and Entertainment, with responsibility for overall leadership in regional wired, including consumer, regional business sales and network. He was appointed to that post in January 2007, after the close of the AT&T-BellSouth merger, which consolidated ownership of Cingular.
From 2004-2006, de la Vega served as chief operating officer of Cingular Wireless, with responsibility for technology planning, network operations, marketing, sales and customer care.
Before joining Cingular in January 2004, he served as president-BellSouth Latin America, with overall responsibility for BellSouth's operations in 11 countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil and Guatemala.
He also has served as BellSouth's president of Broadband and Internet Services. In this position, he had overall responsibility for the deployment, marketing and operations of broadband services. In addition, he had responsibility for BellSouth Internet Services and BellSouth's rapidly growing data support groups.
Mr. de la Vega started his career in 1974 with BellSouth (then Southern Bell) as a management assistant. He has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in Network Planning, Consumer Services, Engineering and Operations — including a rotational assignment at Telcordia (Bellcore) — and was responsible for all BellSouth Telecommunications Network Operations in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Mr. de la Vega's involvement with the community is extensive. He is a member of the Board of Directors of both Junior Achievement Worldwide and the Boy Scouts of America. He plays a leadership role in helping both organizations recruit Hispanic youth. He recently was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s prestigious Alumni Hall of Fame which honors select Hispanics for their personal achievements, contributions and service to America.
A native of Cuba, he holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Florida Atlantic University and a master’s degree in business administration from Northern Illinois University, and he has completed the Executive Program at the University of Virginia.
As of Sept. 29, 2008
Dr. Phillip Alvelda, Serial Entrepreneur
Chairman and Founder, the Westminster Institute for Science Education
Founder and Board Member, MobiTV
alvelda@wiseteachers.org
p 510.499.8459
Dr. Alvelda is the Founder and Chairman of the non-profit Westminster Institute for Science Education [WISE], and the thought-leader behind the WISE Labs collaborative approach to K-12 STEM education reform. WISE was founded to extend and enrich K-12 science, technology, and engineering education nationwide by enabling students of all ages to perform scientific inquiry and engineering development of their own instead of simply hearing about how others have done so in classroom lectures or cook-book style labs. WISE customizes programs on a school-by-school basis by leveraging the faculty, student, and alumni networks of local universities with the philanthropic support of local businesses. The institute's primary goal is to harness each community's enlightened self-interest in systematically and purposely training students to be creative and innovative in their explorations of 21st century challenges.
Prior to founding WISE, Dr. Alvelda was the founding CEO of MobiTV, Inc., now the world's leading provider of live television, video-on-demand and digital music over mobile and broadband networks. Dr. Alvelda led the team that took the idea of "rich media delivery over wireless networks" from concept to market leadership with the world's first live television experience over mobile phones. Under Dr. Alvelda's leadership from November 1999 through April 2007, the Company created an entirely new media distribution channel, now called mobile television. Since MobiTV's debut on Sprint in November 2003, Dr. Alvelda grew the Emmy® Award winning service to more than two million paying subscribers through expansion into several international markets, and launched a broadband PC version of the service in partnership with AT&T. The company now has over 4 million paying subscribers, making MobiTV the high-technology industry leader in converged media delivery services and the 8th largest television provider in the US, a remarkable feat accomplished in under five years. Dr. Alvelda and his team were awarded an Emmy Award by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, selected by Fast Company as the US's 15th most influential high technology entrepreneur, and granted numerous other technology and industry leadership awards from AlwaysOn, CNET, Fierce-Wireless, Frost & Sullivan, Mobile Entertainment (One of the top 20 most influential New Media Executives), Red Herring and other influencers for innovation and market leadership. He is a regular invited speaker at most media, telecom, and entrepreneurial industry events and conferences including the World Economic Forum where he was chosen as a "Technology Pioneer" in 2007. Dr. Alvelda continues to serve on MobiTV's Board of Directors.
Prior to MobiTV, Dr. Alvelda was the founding CEO and CTO of The MicroDisplay Corporation, a manufacturer of ultra-high resolution miniature displays for portable systems and low cost HDTVs based on the technology he invented as part of his MIT Ph.D. dissertation. MicroDisplay was initially founded based on an $11 million DARPA contract for which Dr. Alvelda was the Principle Investigator. Prior to MicroDisplay, Dr. Alvelda attended graduate school at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he applied for, and won, a $6M grant from DARPA for which he was the Lead Investigator. The grant to develop VLSI Microdisplay Technologies ultimately became the foundation for his first company.
Prior to receiving his PH.D degree from MIT, Dr. Alvelda joined the South Pasadena High School in 1989 where he was an award-winning Physics and Math teacher. He was selected as the top teacher in California's Knowledge Bowl Competition (5th in the Nation), and went on to design and implement a unique hands-on exploratory AP Physics curriculum. Dr. Alvelda has been continuously involved in K-12 and Undergraduate education since 1989 first through teaching positions in graduate school at MIT, and later through ongoing sponsorship and mentoring of high school and undergraduates in corporate internships, and most recently as a Trustee and board member of K-12 schools.
Prior to South Pasadena High School, Dr. Alvelda was a developer of spacecraft hardware and software systems, and new sensing & computing architectures at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was twice-awarded the highly-coveted and competitive Director's Discretionary Research Grant to conduct independent research on both satellite navigation systems and audio signal processing technology based on human neurology. Dr. Alvelda also was one of the engineers who designed and built a series of star and target tracking sensors that flew on the Space Shuttle Astros Ultraviolet Astronomy missions as well as the Galileo and Magellan interplanetary spacecraft.
Dr. Alvelda holds over 15 patents and patents pending on a wide range of technologies, a technical Emmy Award, a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Cornell University, and Masters and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Professor Joy Laskar
Schlumberger Chair in Microelectronics
Director Georgia Electronic Design Center
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Phone: 404-894-5268
Email: joy.laskar@ece.gatech.edu
Dr. Joy Laskar received his B.S. degree (Computer Engineering with Math/Physics Minors, summa cum laude) from Clemson University and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 1995, Dr. Laskar was a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
At Georgia Tech he holds the Schlumberger Chair in Microelectronics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also Founder and Director of the Georgia Electronic Design Center, and he heads a research group of 70 members (graduate students, research staff and administration) with a focus on integration of high-frequency mixed-signal electronics for next-generation wireless and wire line systems. Between 1995 and summer 2008 Dr. Laskar graduated 34 Ph.D. students. He has authored or co-authored more than 500 papers, several book chapters and three books (with another book in development). He has given numerous invited talks, and he has more than 40 patents issued or pending.
In 1998 Dr. Laskar co-founded an advanced WLAN IC Company: RF Solutions, which is now part of Anadgics (Nasdaq: Anad). In 2001 he co-founded a next-generation analog CMOS IC Company, Quellan, which is developing collaborative signal-processing solutions for the enterprise, video, storage and wireless markets. Since 2003, he has worked very closely with Samsung to establish its North American Design Center in Atlanta.
Dr. Laskar’s honors include the Army Research Office’s Young Investigator Award in 1995, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award in 1996, NSF Packaging Research Center Faculty of the Year in 1997, and co-recipient of the IEEE Rappaport Award (Best IEEE Electron Devices Society Journal Paper) in 1999. He was faculty advisor for the 2000 IEEE MTT IMS Best Student Paper award, was Georgia Tech Faculty Graduate Student Mentor of the year in 2001, received a 2002 IBM Faculty Award, and the 2003 Clemson University College of Engineering Outstanding Young Alumni Award. He was the 2003 recipient of the Outstanding Young Engineer award of the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society and was named an IEEE Fellow in 2005. For the 2004-2006 term, Dr. Laskar served as an IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer and currently is an IEEE EDS Distinguished Lecturer. He received Georgia Tech’s “Outstanding Faculty Research Author” award in 2007 and ECE’s Distinguished Mentor Award in 2008. Dr. Laskar served as General Chairman of the IEEE International Microwave Symposium 2008 and will serve as an elected member of the IEEE MTT-S Administrative Committee.