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.

Nabil Yousef Wasily
CTO
Prior to joining Newport Media, Nabil was a Senior Staff Scientist at Broadcom Broadband Systems Group. He worked on designing highly integrated SoC (System-On-Chip) products for Docsis cable modem head-ends, and terrestrial DTV receivers. Throughout his career, Nabil worked on architectures and algorithms for various communications and signal processing techniques including Equalization and Synchronization of digital single and multi-carrier receivers, OFDM, FEC, ISP, and MPEG Video/Audio Codecs. He also managed SW teams developing device drivers, protocol stacks, and middleware for various DTV and multi-media systems. He obtained his PhD degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and his MSc and BSc degrees from Ain Shams University. Nabil has published 20 IEEE papers. He holds 41 issued US patents.

Hassan Hashemi
Vice President, Operations
Prior to joining Newport Media, Hassan was an Executive Director of Packaging and Product Development at Mindspeed Technologies. Previously, he was a Director of Advanced Packaging at Conexant and Rockwell, member technical staff at AMD, and senior member of technical staff at MCC. Hassan has over 25 years of semiconductor industry experience in engineering and operations. He started his career in wafer scale integration R&D working on CuPI and laminate interconnect projects. Hassan holds BSEE degree from the University of Houston, and MSEE degrees from the University of Texas. He holds 30 US patents.

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

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

Dwight W. Decker
Director

In addition to serving on the board of Newport Media, Mr. Decker has been chairman of the board of Conexant since December 1998, serving as the non-executive chairman of the board from February 2004 until November 2004 and again since July 2007. He served as the chief executive officer of Conexant from January 1999 to February 2004 and from November 2004 to July 2007.
Mr. Decker also serves as a director of BCD Semiconductor Manufacturing Limited (semiconductors?analog) and Pacific Mutual Holding Company (life insurance products). He also serves as a director or member of numerous professional and civic organizations.

Steven Goldberg
Director

As an Executive-In-Residence at Venrock Associates. Steven currently sits on the boards of Newport Media, Quantenna, and Teranetics.
Prior to joining Venrock he led, as CEO, a number of early stage companies including DataRunway, Vidient, Arcwave, and CoWave Networks. His general management and technical experience have been focused in the telecommunications and wireless markets. He was also Vice President of Research and Development at Nokia Internet Communications and VP and GM of the Wireless Communications Division at Cylink Corporation, which, after going public, was later sold to P-Com. Additionally, he has held senior management and engineering positions at Trimble Navigation and Hewlett Packard.
Steve holds a Ph.D. E.E. from the University of California at Santa Barbara and M.S.E.E. and B.S.E.E degrees from Washington University in St Louis, Mo. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a past president of the IEEE Communications Society, Santa Clara Section.