The Department of Electrical Engineering

Dr. Dries is currently the President and CEO of United Silicon Carbide which offers products that will enable affordable power efficiency. He graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1994 and then proceeded to earn his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton in the field of InGaAsP based optoelectronic devices. Upon graduation, he joined Sensors Unlimited in Princeton NJ, leading the company's development of optical receivers for fiber based transmission systems. Following the sale of the business to Finisar Corporation in 2000, Dr. Dries and other members of the Sensors management team took the business private again in 2002, and re-built the company as an imaging and spectroscopy business. In 2005, Goodrich Corporation acquired Sensors Unlimited where Dr. Dries was Vice President of Research and Development. He left Goodrich Corporation in 2007 and co-founded DOLCE Technologies to pursue other early stage high technology ventures. Dr. Dries also serves on the Dean of the Graduate School's Leadership Council, is an active volunteer for Princeton University Annual Giving, and serves on Duke University's Pratt School Board of Visitors.

John J. Koger, was founder, President and CEO of Oasis Semiconductor Incorporated, a leader in the design and sales of system controller chips for all-in-one printer products started in 1995.   Oasis Semiconductor helped create the low-cost, all-in-one laser and inkjet printer market segment by providing chips and software to customers like Kodak, Sharp, Lexmark, Dell and Canon.  Oasis was sold in late 2005.  Prior to Oasis John spent 10 years at Digital Equipment Corporation Semiconductor Engineering Group in various roles including Multimedia Chips Marketing Manager, 3D Graphics Chip Architect, Project Leader and Principal Engineer.  John received his B.S.E. Degree from Princeton in 1985 and his M.S.E. Degree from Columbia University in 1986.

Vidya Krishnan received her Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1995, and her Master's degree in Electrical Engineering/Telecommunications from Stanford University in 1996.  She worked for AT&T's Network Planning group in Middletown, NJ from 1993 to 1998, and then joined Nortel's Wireless Engineering organization in 1998 in Richardson, TX. She was manager of the GSM Network Engineering team from 2000 - 2006, and then served as Senior Manager of the CDMA and WiMAX Engineering organization from 2006 - 2009. During this time, Vidya completed Nortel's executive leadership program and the City of Richardon's civic leadership program. After Ericsson's acquisition of Nortel's wireless divisions in 2009 and 2010,Vidya became the Director of GSM/UMTS Mobile Switching (Engineering and Operations) for Ericsson North America. Vidya has published a paper on Telecom Development in Underserved Areas, and was also a contributing author to Princeton University's Major Choices publication.

Conor is co-founder and CEO of Kateeva, a high-tech, silicon valley start-up developing manufacturing equipment for the flat panel display industry.  Before Kateeva he was a post-doctoral research scientist at MIT which his area of specialization was organic electronics.  He is the author of numerous publications and holds patents in fields spanning physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, materials science, and software engineering.  In 2010, he was honored as one of the “Technology Review 35”, the group of top young innovators in technology named annually by Technology Review magazine.  Conor earned a Bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a Ph.D. from MIT. Both degrees are in electrical engineering.

Kamran Rafieyan received his B.S.E. from Princeton University in 1989 and an M.S. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1990. Prior to Lava Trading, a technology firm providing equity trading solutions to the financial community, Mr. Rafieyan worked in the Applied Research group at Bellcore. He has also held technology posts and completed consulting projects with a number of leading financial firms, including Dow Jones/Telerate, Reuters, Nomura Securities, and institutional broker GFI Group.

Jim is a founder and managing partner at GenNx360 Capital Partner, L.P., a $600 million buyout, private equity fund that invests in industrial and services B2B businesses with proven and sustainable business models.   The Fund has made a number of acquisitions in the Specialty Chemical, Precision Machining and Asset Light Logistics spaces since 2006.

Shepard received his B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University and then went on to the University of Pennsylvania to earn an M.S. in systems engineering.

Donald Steinberg graduated in 1988 from Harvard Law School with a J.D. degree and from Princeton University with a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.  Don is a Partner and Chair of the Intellectual Property Department at WilmerHale in Boston.  His practice focuses on advising clients on intellectual property matters, obtaining patent and trademark protection, and intellectual property litigation.  Before joining WilmerHale, Don practiced law at Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks and Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault in Boston.  After graduation from law school, Don was a Law Clerk to The Honorable Martin F. Loughlin of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire.  Mr. Steinberg is a member of the Software and Business Methods Committee of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO).  He speaks regularly on patent law, strategy, and protection.

Karthik Vasanth received the Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (Chennai) in 1991. He received his Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1995. He joined the Silicon Technology Development group at Texas Instruments in 1995 and worked on compact process and device simulation models. From 2003-2007 was the RF Design manager for the High Performance Wireless Infrastructure Products group at Texas Instruments. He was also elected as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Texas Instruments in 2005. In 2007 he became the product line manager of the Medical Business Unit at Texas Instruments. In September of 2010 he became the General Manager for the Medical and High-reliability Business Unit at Texas Instruments. He has published over 30 papers and authored/co-authored several patents.

Larry Walker has more than 30 years experience in the management of sales, support, engineering and manufacturing of networking, microprocessor and computer products.  He began his career with Hewlett -Packard in Palo Alto.  Larry then went to Digital Equipment Corporation, where he led the semiconductor engineering department.  He advanced to become vice president and general manager of Digital's Network Product Business Group.  After his work with Digital, Larry became chief executive officer of CertCo. In 1997, he became chief executive officer, president and co-founder of C-Port.  Motorola acquired C-Port in 2000, and Larry was appointed vice president of Strategy for their Network and Computing Systems Group.  He retired from Motorola in 2002. Dr. Walker is on the boards of the Massachusetts Network Communications Council, Silicon Laboratories, Autocell Networks, Ciclon Semiconductor, Mintera, and the Hopkins School.  He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton as well as his master's degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT.
 

Eugene Wong received his BA and PhD (electrical engineering) from Princeton. He worked for IBM Research Center in Yorktown, NY, from 1960 - 1962 before joining the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962. He later served as chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley. As a pioneering researcher in database management systems, Wong co-designed INGRES, one of the first modern database systems, and then co-founded INGRES Corp., a leading provider of commercial database software. From 1990 to 1993, Wong served as associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and from 1998 to 2000 he served as head of the engineering directorate of the National Science Foundation. He was a long-time director of Versata, Inc., an Oakland, CA, based software company and served as its President and CEO from 2002 to 2003. Currently, he is an advisor to Siemens Technology-to-Business, Inc., and a member of the Board of Directors of NACCO Industries, Inc.