New Wireless Innovation Forum Board Members Announced at Annual Technical Conference and Product Exposition

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Wireless Innovation Forum (www.WirelessInnovation.org) members elected new members of their board of directors during its annual technical conference and product exposition, SDR’09, the premier event for bringing next generation radio technologies to life, held through December 4 in Washington, D.C.

Board members returning to their current positions include Peter Cook (HYPRES) as Chair of the Board, Ruediger Leschhorn (Rohde & Schwarz) as Vice-Chair of the Forum, Mark Turner (Harris) as Treasurer, Claude Belisle (Communications Research Center Canada) as Technical Director, Manuel Uhm (Xilinx) as User Requirements Committee Chair, Peter Tenhula (Shared Spectrum) as Regulatory Committee Chair, and David Renaudeau (Thales) as ITU Region 1 representative.

Board members changing positions include Bruce Oberlies (Motorola), formerly ITU Region 2 representative and now Chair of the Forum, John Powell (National Public Safety Telecommunications Council), formerly Secretary and now Government and Non-profit Class representative, Eric Christensen (General Dynamics C4Systems), formerly an at large Director and now Forum Secretary, Hiroshi Harada (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology), formerly the ITU Region 2 representative and now an at large Director, Pekka Heikkinen (Elektrobit) formerly the Medium Company class representative and now an at large Director, and Dave Murotake (SCA Technica), formerly the Small Company class representative and now an at large Director.

In addition, the Board of Directors welcomes the following 6 new members:

• Jim Rodenkirch, Diversified Technologies, elected the ITU Region 2 Representative. Jim, currently, is a Systems Engineering consultant and Senior Technical Advisor to Diversified Technology, Incorporated and adjunct Professor at Southern Methodist University. He retired as a Systems Engineer from Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWARSYSCEN), Charleston, S.C., in the fall of 2006. Jim began his federal service career in the U.S. Navy, retiring in 1981 as a Chief Petty Officer. He worked in industry as a Process, Vacuum and Test Set Equipment Supervisor at Varian Associates, Palo Alto, Calif. He then moved to employment with the Department of the Navy (DoN) acquiring 18 years of experience in process development and methodologies associated with DoD C4I system implementation and installations for shore and afloat platforms. While assigned to SPAWAR System Command’s Chief Engineer Office in San Diego, Calif., from 2003 through 2006 as a Systems Engineer for the U.S. Navy’s FORCEnet initiative, he was involved heavily in the development of system engineering processes and methodologies. His recent focus has been the development of architectural products for Complex Systems, Systems Engineering, and Capability Based Assessments associated with Complex Systems. Mr. Rodenkirch received his BS from Chapman University in 1992 and his MS in Systems Engineering from Southern Methodist University in 2004.
• Seung-Hwan Lee, ETRI, elected ITU Region 3 Representative. Dr. Lee earned BS and MS degrees in electronics engineering from Korea University, Seoul, Korea, in 1995 and 1997, respectively, and a PhD degree in science and engineering from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK in 2007. He has been with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Daejeon, Korea, as a senior member of engineering staff since 2001. He is now in charge of ITU-R standardization of Cognitive Radio System (CRS) as a representative of the Korean ITU-R committee as well as researching SDR techniques for CRS. Before he joined the ETRI, he had worked for several venture companies in Korea developing mobile communication systems such as IS-95, cdma2000 1xEV-DO and W-CDMA. His research interests include smart antenna, MIMO, cross-layer optimization, SDR and CRS for future wireless systems.
• Bob Schutz, ViaSAT, elected the Large Company Representative. Bob Schutz has been involved in the satellite and spacecraft industries for the past 34 years. Bob currently manages Advanced Programs for the Government SATCOM Systems (GSS) division of ViaSat, Inc. In this capacity, he is heavily involved with research organization, academic intuitions, and industry partners in development of technology and systems that will lead to the next generation of satellite communications. Prior to joining ViaSat in 2004, Bob spent 15 years as the CEO of Silicon Arts, a consulting company focused on development of components for satellite and terrestrial communication systems, and remains active in the field of component development for advanced communications. His involvement in the satellite industry began in 1976 when he worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as a Cognitive Engineer for the Plasma Wave and Ultraviolet Spectrometer sub-systems for the Voyager spacecraft.
• Rafael Aguado, Indra Sistemas, elected the Medium Company Representative. Mr. Rafael Aguado is currently responsible for developing the SCA Spanish national platform. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from Politechnic University of Madrid. He started his career at the Nokia Research Center in Tampere, Finland, in 1999. In 2007 he began participation in the Military Communications department, being involved in most of the European initiatives for Radio Software development. He manages the SCA area of interest for the Spanish efforts on ESSOR programme. He joined the Forum in 2007, and has been heavily involved, participating in the SCA WG and chairing the International Tactical Radio SIG.
• John Glossner, Sandbridge Technologies, elected the Small Company Representative. Dr. Glossner is co-founder, CTO, and Executive Vice President at Sandbridge Technologies. Prior to co-founding Sandbridge, John managed both technical and business activities in DSP and Broadband Communications at IBM and Lucent/Starcore. John received a PhD in Computer Architecture from TU Delft in the Netherlands, MS degrees in E.E. and Eng. Mgt from NTU, and a BSEE degree from Penn State. John is chair of the Commercial Baseband Working Group of the SDR Forum, a Senior member of the IEEE and has more than 120 publications and 36 issued patents.
• Paul Sutton, CTVR, elected the Academic Representative. Dr. Paul Sutton is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Telecommunications Research (CTVR) based at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland. He has been actively involved in the research and development of software-defined radio systems since 2004. In this time, his work has addressed key challenges in the areas of software radio architecture design and rendezvous and coordination in dynamic spectrum access networks. He received a PhD in Electronic Engineering in 2008 from University of Dublin, Trinity College.
• Paul Kolodzy, Kolodzy Consulting, elected Member at Large. Dr. Paul Kolodzy has 20 years of experience in technology development for advanced communications, networking, electronic warfare, and spectrum policy for government, commercial, and academic clients. He is currently a Communications Technology Consultant in Advanced Wireless and Networking Technology based near Washington, D.C. He is the co-founder of the IEEE DySPAN conference and chair of the inaugural 2005 conference. He is active in technology development for wireless components and new wireless networks and architectures as well as spectrum policy as impacted by new technology. For commercial clients he is currently doing research and analyses for 700 MHz, TV Whitespace, Advanced Wireless Services – AWS, and the proposed National Broadband Radio Services. Prior to being a consultant, Dr. Kolodzy has been: at Stevens Institute of Technology; during 2002, the Senior Spectrum Policy Advisor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Director of Spectrum Policy Task Force; Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA); Director at Sanders, A Lockheed Martin Company; and a Group Leader/Staff Member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

The Forum would like to thank outgoing members John Chapin (Vanu), former Forum Chair; Bernard Eydt (Booz Allen Hamilton), former Member at large; Richard Taylor (Tyco Electronics), former Large Company Representative; and Seungwon Choi (Hanyang University), former Academic Representative, for their service and hard work.

SDR’09 featured an exhibition, four workshops (Analysts, Regulatory, Government R&D and SATCOM), a JTRS SBIR Industry Day, keynotes by high caliber industry leaders, more than 100 high quality technical presentations over four days from industry, government, and university experts, tutorials held on each day of the conference, and a new welcome event featuring product demonstrations. The Conference program can be found at http://sdrforum.org/sdr09/program.html.

SDR’09 represents the latest in an annual conference that has become a highlight on the wireless industry event calendar. Sponsored this year by General Dynamics C4 Systems, Harris, Motorola, Xilinx, Wind River, and Pentek, the event brings together world-class business and technical leaders from around the world across commercial and civil organizations including service providers, operators, manufacturers, developers, regulatory agencies, and academia.

About The Wireless Innovation Forum

Established in 1996, The Wireless Innovation Forum is a non-profit international industry association with a 100+ strong membership comprised of world-class technical, business and government organizations from EMEA, Asia and the Americas who are passionate about creating a revolution in wireless communications based on reconfigurable radio. It is the only organization in the world dedicated to serving the industry's needs through advocacy, opportunity development, commercialization and education. The renaming will not change the current benefits provided to its members. To learn more about The Wireless Innovation Forum, its meetings and membership benefits, visit www.WirelessInnovation.org.