Management Team    
Mohy Abdelgany
CEO & Director
Prior to founding Newport Media, Mohy was a VP, Business Director and Founder of RF Solutions Business Unit ($500 million annual revenues at the time of Mohy's departure) at Skyworks , Conexant and Rockwell (1995-2004). Prior to joining Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, he was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs (1989-1995). Mohy has over 22 years of wireless semiconductor industry experience in engineering, marketing and GM roles. He holds an MSEE from NJIT, and a BSEE from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Mohy has 7 issued US Patents.firms.

Luke Smith
COO
Prior to joining Newport Media, Luke was a President & CEO of Potentia, a fabless PMIC company in Ottawa, Canada. Previously, he was a COO of Philsar, and a VP of Operations at Synergy Semiconductor. Luke has over 29 years of semiconductor industry experience with senior management roles at TI, National, Analog Devices and Conexant. He was a VP of Manufacturing at Analog Devices. Luke holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from University of Nebraska, and an MBA from Westminster in Salt Lake City.

Mohamed Ben-Romdhane
Vice President Baseband Engineering
Prior to Newport Media, Mohamed worked for Conexant Systems as an Executive Director of SOC (System-On-Chip) platforms which included IP core designs, IP licensing and integration for cable modem, DSL, dial up modem, set-top box, convergence video, home gateways, VOIP, and WLAN products. Mohamed's career in the high technology semiconductor sector spans over 20 years. He served in several technical and managerial roles at Conexant Systems, Rockwell Science Center, and IRSIT. Mohamed is the author or several journal and conference publications in the areas of embedded systems, DSP, communications, low power design and SOC architectures. He holds a Ph.D. in ECE from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a ¡°Diplome d'Ingenieur Principal¡± from ¡°l'Ecole Nationale d'Ingenieurs de Tunis.¡±

James Kamke
Vice President Marketing and Sales
Prior to joining Newport Media, Jim was CEO of Spectra Wireless. Previously he was VP of Business Development at Sequoia Communications and VP of Product Marketing at PrairieComm Inc. Jim has 22 years of system semiconductor, cellular handset and RF experience. He has held various Business and Marketing positions at Rockwell Semiconductor's Wireless Division and Motorola's cellular handset business. Jim's engineering background includes various engineering and engineering management positions at Motorola's cellular handset business. Jim began his engineering career at Northrop Defense Systems where he designed RF/Microwave circuits and subsystems. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BSEE degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Frank Carr
Vice President, RF Engineering
Prior to joining Newport Media, Frank was VP of Engineering at Axiom Microdevices, developing CMOS RF Power Amplifiers and Transceivers for cell phones. Frank has over 25 years of experience in the Wireless and Semiconductor industry, and has held various technical and managerial positions at Broadcom, Rockwell Semiconductor, Motorola Semiconductor, Plessey Semiconductor, and Marconi Radar Systems. He holds a Master of Engineering degree from the University of Sheffield, UK.

  Board of Directors About us > Management Team  

Alex Balkanski
Director

Benchmark Capital
Prior to joining Benchmark, Alex led C-Cube and DiviCom, two pioneering companies that drove the MPEG standard to dominance in consumer electronics and broadcasting. Alex founded C-Cube in 1988. In 1994, he took the company public, and in 1998 he orchestrated C-Cube¡¯s acquisition of DiviCom. By 2000, C-Cube was generating a half-billion dollars in annual revenue with 1,200 employees worldwide.
Widely recognized as industry leaders, C-Cube and DiviCom were the recipients of several prestigious awards, including an Emmy?the first ever awarded to a semiconductor company. C-Cube was also voted the Most Respected Public Company as well as the Best Financially Managed Company by the Fabless Semiconductor Association.

Alex serves on the Boards of Ambarella, Aspendos, Decru, Entrisphere, Infinera, Picarro and Xoomsys.
Alex holds a Ph.D. and a master¡¯s degree from Harvard University as well as a B.S. from Harvard College.

Benchmark's web site is: www.benchmark.com

Eric Copeland
Director

Eric Copeland joined Venrock's Menlo Park office as an associate in 1998 and became a partner in 2000. His prior experience was as an electrical engineer in RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave digital communications systems at Hewlett-Packard, E?ON, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Aloha Networks.

At Venrock, Eric focuses on semiconductors, hardware and software for communications infrastructure, enterprise infrastructure and consumer electronics. His current board assignments include 2Wire , Anchor Bay Technologies , Arcwave , General Bandwidth , Hellosoft , Kenet , Keyotee , Kineto Wireless , MaXXan Systems , Newport Media, SteelEye Technology , and Teranetics . Eric previously served on the boards of Kendin Communications, acquired by Micrel (Nasdaq:MCRL); Cadant, acquired by Arris Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:ARRS); and TalkingNets , acquired by DSL.net (Nasdaq:DSLN).

Eric graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and he received an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Venrock's web site is: www.venrock.com

Vijay Parikh
Director

Mr. Vijay C. Parikh (Managing Principal) was Vice-President and General Manager within the Public Carrier IP Group (PCIPG) at Cisco. During his tenure he was responsible for developing and introducing the 10G solution on the 12416 GSR platform, which resulted in the sales growth from $400 million in FY 1998 to several billion dollars FY in 2001.

Mr. Parikh was President and CEO of StratumOne Communications, a leading developer of framers and layer 2/3 engines for 10G solutions in high-end routing/switching applications. StratumOne was funded by Sequoia Capital, Brentwood Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, and Redwood Ventures. Cisco Systems acquired StratumOne on September 20, 1999 representing its most expensive private acquisition at that time.
Prior to StratumOne, Mr. Parikh was VP/GM of the Wireless Communications Division (WCD) at Conexant where he grew it from a non-revenue position to a $180 million business at the time of his departure. WCD had programs in all of the key wireless technologies including GSM, CDMA, TDMA, Spread Spectrum, PHS, DECT and PDC. Prior to that he had several VP/GM positions at Conexant including those for the Personal Computing Division (PCD) which involved programs in software modems, PC audio and xDSL and the Global Positioning System (GPS) division which had programs focused on the integration of multi-channel GPS with wireless data systems including those for ARDIS, CDPD and Mobitex. He also held several management positions at Conexant in its Japanese Operations facility.
Mr. Parikh is Chairman of Ultradots, and is on the Board of Chelsio Communications, Newport Media and Teranetics.
Mr. Parikh has a BSEE from the Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences in India and an MBA from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Global Catalyst Partners' web site is: www.gc-partners.com