Advisory Board

Chris is Vice President of Sales/Marketing for Avery Design Systems, Inc., an EDA startup company focused on tools to automate the functional verification of ASICs, SOCs, and systems. From 1989 to 1998, he held various positions at Cadence Design Systems including Director of ASIC Design Services, Director of Top-down IC Design Practice, and marketing manager for synthesis, timing analysis, and test products. Prior to 1989, Chris held numerous other positions in applications engineering and hardware systems development. He has been responsible for system and ASIC design projects involving large-scale ATM switching systems, Non-linear digital video editing systems, and massively parallel multiprocessors. Chris received his B.S.E.E. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1984.

Linc is a co-founder and a Project Manager at 74ze Engineering, an ASIC and FPGA design and verification services company. He currently focuses on leading their Eastern European team on various projects and in standardizing their SystemVerilog verification flow. Linc recently managed projects including verification of a video-processing ASIC, development of a memory subsystem for a graphics chip, and developing a build flow for an Altera FPGA. Prior to 74ze, Linc served in various design and verification roles as an ASIC engineer at Cabletron Systems, AuraVision, BroadLogic, Believe, Transmeta, and Unicore Microsystems. As an engineer in Silicon Valley, Linc recognized the advantage of utilizing the highly-skilled, but less expensive engineering expertise of foreign specialists as consultants to fulfill the temporary staffing requirements on various design projects. He formed 74ze to provide contracted engineering services utilizing talent available throughout Eastern Europe as well as the United States. Linc earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.

Raised in Ohio, with a background in Fine Arts, Travel, Nature, and Wildlife, Chris traveled extensively working primarily in Hotels and Hospitality to fund his passion for Adventure Travel. He settled in Creede, Colorado for 5 years - the perfect place for nature lovers, artists, and adventurous folks. Colorado has a sense of community like nowhere else, and as a small business operator and co-owner of a restaurant, it was a pleasure for Chris to be part of it; while there he completed training for Wildfire Protection and Firefighting. After selling the restaurant Chris traveled again to Australia and eventually to Africa to follow his passions and ambitions in Tourism and Conservation. Having completed the construction and development of a new Lodge and Conservation Trust adjacent to the spectacular Nairobi National Park in Kenya, Chris started his own fundraising entity called Super Sawa that focuses on fully vetting particular organizations and seeking immediate funds for specific projects and on the ground assistance in Africa. Chris continues to guide private safaris in Africa and the Southwest USA.

Dorin is an Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology and is an expert in Systems Design, Communications and Computer Architecture. Dorin holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca at Cluj-Napoca, Romania and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Washington State University at Pullman, WA.

Dan is an Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology and is an expert in Systems Design, Embedded Software, Communications and Biomedical Engineering. Dan holds an BS in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo, NY and his MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester at Rochester, NY.

In Memoriam

John served as Chief Technical Officer and Senior Vice President of Platform Engineering for Performance Technologies Inc (PTI) since 2005. PTI is a publically traded NASDAQ (PTIX) high technology company that develops a wide range of IP based communications products for the Telecom, Defense and Aerospace industries. Prior to this position, John served as Vice President of Hardware Engineering from 2000 to 2005. Earlier, he held the position of Vice President of Development, Network Switching Products. Prior to joining Performance Technologies, John held various engineering positions with Computer Consoles (acquired by Nortel Networks). He has a BS in electrical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology. John holds one US patent in the area of Ethernet networks and has authored several industry recognized specifications used by many of the world's leading communications companies.

A long-term, well known and respected visionary in the embedded systems market, John contributed to the definition, development and practical implementation of many open architecture bus standards from VMEbus through xTCA. Of particular note, he was the spearhead behind PICMG 2.16, the industry's first open standard for switched fabric architectures. He was also the father of VME-64, a significant performance enhancement to the original VMEbus design. John was actively engaged in supporting various Rochester Institute of Technology initiatives including the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and the Imagine R.I.T. Innovation and Creativity Festival. In addition to his professional career and associations, John enjoyed many personal interests including motorcycles, sports cars, photography, snowmobiling, sailing, and target shooting.