Maryam Rofougaran

Maryam and Reza Rofougaran, two talented siblings from the city of Isfahan of Iran, were born in years 1968 and 1964 respectively, where they continued their education through middle and high school, and received several awards for their excellence in different fields. They then immigrated to the United States to pursue their dream of becoming a successful scientist and a difference maker in the world of physics and engineering.

Pursuing their dreams, Maryam and Reza both continued their BS, and MS at UCLA and early on started to work as a research assistant for Prof. Asad Abidi who is internationally well known for his contribution to the field of RF CMOS. They were again the overachievers who again received several awards and scholarship throughout their schooling years at UCLA. The field they focues on as their graduate research RF circuit design for wireless systems using digital CMOS technology, a goal that seemed to be impossible by industry belief . After completing their B.S. and M.S. degrees, they decdied to work in the industry for a few years before continuing their doctorate in the same school. Preceeding Maryam, Reza started his PHD thesis on the implementation of a CMOS 900MHz frequency hopped spread spectrum system for short-range wireless applications in digital CMOS technology, where Maryam joined his group at UCLA as a key member to help him with the reseach as a part of her own Ph.D. few years later. Their Ph.D. work in UCLA became a very successful project and got them international recognition and awards.

They are the author and co-authors of numerous international conference and journal papers, and patents that grew out of this research, a number of which became award-wining papers including the 1995 European Solid-State Circuits Conference ñBest Paper Awardî, the 1996 International Solid State Circuits Conference ñISSCC Jack Kilby Awardî for Outstanding Paper, the 1997 ISSCC ñJack Raper Awardî for Outstanding Technology Direction, and the 1998 Design Automation Conference ñBest Paper Awardî. Reza completed his Ph.D. thesis in 1998 while we was working on the plans to start Innovent System with his sister Maryam who was one year from completing her Ph.D. at UCLA.

By 1998 the two brother and sister were involved with a lot of start-up companies as consultant or part-time and had lived through experience the excitement of being part of a start-up company, where they observed and learned the facts in making a company successful or unsuccessful. The technologies they developed during this period included system and IC designs of several wireless applications such as GSM, GPS, CT2 Cordless phones, low-power pagers, and CDMA front-ends using CMOS, Bipolar, BiCMOS and SiGe Technologies.

Reza and Maryam had decided to start their own company way before their company got funded in the January of 1999. Pioneering RF CMOS at UCLA, working in the industry with other start-ups and observing their friends and strangers succeed in pursuing their goal and accomplishing their mission, they were all motivated to start their own company focusing on real application of what they had pioneered ñRF CMOSî. They founded MicroLink Corporation (later known as Innovent Systems) in the January of 1999. Reza and Maryam were co-founders, technologists and also management of the company, while also being key persons in identifying strategic partners, customers. They assembled a very strong technical advisory board with leader and internationally known individuals in both academy and industry. They also attracted a very strong technical group to their company since day one. At MicroLink Maryam acted as the vice president and Reza as the chief technical officer. After the acquisition of Innovent Systems in the July of 2000 by Broadcom corp., Reza as the senior technical director and Maryam as the technical director have been leading the development activities of the wireless division of Broadcom.

About Innovent Systems

Innovent System was started with the mission to produce chip-sets for short-range wireless applications for standards such as Bluetooth and HomeRF. The company was partially funded by Broadcom Corporation whose founders knew Maryam and Reza from their years in UCLA, where Henry Samueli the Founder of Broadcom was professor and second advisor to Reza and Maryam. In addition to Broadcom, Cross point Ventures, Ventana and several other angel funds participated in the first round of finance of MicroLink. The company started its operation in 1999 and the goal was set to have the first demonstration before the end of the year. During the operation of MicroLink then Innovent systems the founders were key persons in setting directions for the company both technically as well as Marketing and business. They were actively involved with technical development and facilitating the development by constantly interfacing with the offshore foundry houses, tool houses and others. In addition to the main office in West LA where Innovent located to recruit newly talented RFIC CMOS graduate students from UCLA, the founders opened an office in San Diego where they could recruit experienced ASIC engineers from the big companies. The company was set up as a whole system provider rather than just focusing on the radio. The founders knew that to make a company big and be able to take it public they have to be a system provider rather than just a design house. Innovent delivered its first milestone that was its first silicon chip within 6 months before the end of 1999. InnoventÍs first silicon chip was %98 functional despite the complexity of the system and the company was able to demonstrate its low cost solution to the interested potential customers. Up to this point the company had reached to 40 People Company most whom were excellent engineers. After the first milestone the founders started to build the marketing and operation side of the company. Before middle of 2000 the company had grown to more than 60 employees and had numerous press releases with big companies such as Samsung and TSMC regarding working relations and investments in its second round of finance. The analysts had called the company ñBroadcom of wirelessî expecting the company to become as big as Broadcom in the future. In less than a year after Innovent inception, the company had received very much interest from a couple of big companies for merger with them. The founders had built the company on the ground of making it successful and taking it to public in two years. However, by June of 2000 in almost one and a half year after its inception, the two founders received an irresistible offer from Broadcom corp. for a merger. After a few months the founders decided to sell the company to Broadcom, where there was a very good synergy between the two companies and the merger would speed up and facilitate the volume production of their chips for entering the market faster. The company had positioned itself to be the leader the development of bluetooth standard and this merger would ensure the maintenance of its position in the market. The merger was announced early June for over 500 million dollars. This was one of the fastest growing companies in terms of value and development in among all the semiconductor companies to date. By the time that the company was officially Broadcom Innovent had 80 employees with 50 employees at El Segundo and 33 in San Diego. Innovent is now the center of wireless activity in Broadcom and the founders continue to lead the activity of the wireless.

Artilces

Start-up Innovent targeting Bluetooth chip market

Broadcom Completes Acquisition of Innovent Systems, Inc.