IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2014 - 47

Rakesh Kumar Visits Abu Dhabi
SSCS President Encourages Formation of SSCS Chapter in United Arab Emirates

In a visit to the United Arab Emirates in the fall, IEEE Solid-State
Circuits Society (SSCS) President
Rakesh Kumar met with representatives from academia and industry in
response to the emergence of solidstate circuits activities in the United
Arab Emirates. As a result, the United
Arab Emirates has become the latest
geographic region to petition for the
formation of an IEEE SSCS Chapter.
Growth in IC activity in the
United Arab Emirates is due largely
to ecosystem investments-made by
ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Company), a subsidiary of the
Mubadala Development Company-
that are part of Abu Dhabi's vision
of transforming the United Arab
Emirates from an economy based
on natural resources to a diversified economy, as articulated in the
Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030.
ATIC ecosystem investments have
targeted education and industry and
have led to active research programs
at multiple universities and the
founding of technology companies
such as Global Foundries.
During his visit, Dr. Kumar presented a lecture on innovation,
challenges, and entrepreneurship
opportunities
in
microelectronics that highlighted the electronics value chain and the innovation
and commercialization life cycle.
His assessment of the key reasons
for start-up failures generated significant audience interest as did his
emphasis on early customer engagement as a key issue, which spurred
discussion during a round table with
the audience on the optimal point of
customer engagement.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2013.2289633
Date of publication: 30 January 2014

At the Abu Dhabi office of global Foundries (from left): Subhash Bhatia, hassan Kalakeche,
geoffrey Akiki, Mohammed ismail, rakesh Kumar, Abe elfadel, Ayman Shabra, Mohamed
lakehal, and ibrahim Burki.

Dr. Kumar, who is the founder and
CEO of Technology Connexions (TCX,
Inc.) based in Poway, California, and
the author of Fabless Semiconductor
Implementation (McGraw Hill, 2008),
used a nine-point commercialization life cycle framework to explain
how an early-stage lab demonstration can be a useful launching point
for a start-up. He also elaborated on
some overall principles for increasing a start-up's success probability
that included dissenting views from
the "lean start-up" community that
advocates for customer engagement
at the earliest possible point, even
before a demonstration is created.
The solid-state circuit researchers in the United Arab Emirates who
met with Dr. Kumar during his visit
were Prof. Ayman Shabra, Prof. Jerald Yoo, and Prof. Abe Elfadel of
Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi and
Prof. Mohammed Ismail of Khalifa
University, also in Abu Dhabi.
■ Prof.
Ayman Shabra (Masdar
Institute) joined Masdar after
nine years of industrial experience at Analog Devices and MediaTek and focuses on high-speed

■

communication circuits and new
mixed signal architectures.
Prof. Jerald Yoo (Masdar Institute)
came to Masdar from KAIST and
focuses on biomedical circuits,
wearable sensors, and body area
networks.
Prof. Abe Elfadel (Masdar Institute) joined Masdar from IBM,
Yorktown, and heads up the Masdar Institute Center for Microelectronics (Micro); he is also
codirector of the ATIC-SPC Center of Excellence for Energy Efficient Electronic Systems (ACE4S),
which was recently started to foster multidisciplinary research in

Scan this code for the SrC ACe4S Web
site at http://www.src.org/program/
grc/ace4s/.

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