Steve Wozniak

A Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist for more than thirty years, Steve Wozniak has helped shape the computing industry with his design of Apple’s first line of products the Apple I and II and influenced the popular Macintosh. In 1976, Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer, Inc. to market Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. For his achievements at Apple Computer, Inc., Wozniak was awarded the National Medal of Technology, the highest honor bestowed on America’s leading innovators.

Since the 1980's, Wozniak has been involved in various business and philanthropic ventures. He has spent a great deal of time and energy focusing on computer usage in schools by stressing hands-on learning and encouraging creativity for students. In 2000, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and was awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment. Wozniak also co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was the founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. He currently serves as Chief Scientist for Fusion-IO.

Lisa Su

Lisa Su is the senior vice president and general manager of networking and multimedia for Freescale Semiconductor. Su joined Freescale in June 2007 as chief technology officer to lead Freescale’s technology roadmap and global research and development (R&D) operations. She was named general manager of networking and multimedia in September 2008.

Prior to joining Freescale, Su was at International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), where she was vice president of the Semiconductor Research and Development Center and responsible for the strategic direction of IBM’s silicon technologies, joint development alliances and semiconductor R&D operations. Su joined IBM in 1995 and held various engineering and business management positions including vice president of technology development and alliances in the IBM Systems and Technology Group and director of the PowerPC Product Line. Prior to IBM, she was a Member of Technical Staff at Texas Instruments. Su has extensive experience in the semiconductor industry leading technology innovation, microprocessor development and the launch of new products.

Su has authored or co-authored more than 40 technical publications and co-authored a book chapter on next-generation consumer electronics. She was named in MIT Technology Review's Top 100 Young Innovators in 2002 and was named Fellow of the IEEE in 2009. She received bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gadi Singer

Gadi Singer is vice president of the Intel Architecture Group and General Manager, SOC Enabling Group for Intel Corporation. The SOC Enabling Group is responsible for delivering central building blocks and driving Intel's SOC silicon design and software development capabilities focusing on fast turnaround time and modularity practices. Singer joined Intel in 1983, holding a variety of senior technical and management positions. He was appointed VP in 1999 and CTO of Intel Communications Group in 2004, among other accomplishments.

From 2005 through 2007, Singer served as General Manager of the Ultra Mobility Group. Among his prior roles, Singer was GM of Intel's Design Technology Division, co-GM of the IA-64 Processor Division and GM of Enterprise Processors Division. Singer received three Intel Achievement Awards for his technical contributions. He was Chairman of EDA Industry Council from 1997 to 1999. Singer is alumnus of the Technion, Israel.

Dharmendra S. Modha

Dharmendra S. Modha is founding manager of the Cognitive Computing group at IBM's Almaden Research Center. Currently, he is the Principal Investigator for DARPA SyNAPSE team of IBM Research - Almaden, IBM Research - Watson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University, and University of California at Merced. Most recently, his group performed cortical simulations at scale of cat cerebral cortex (1 billion neurons, 10 trillion synapses) only 100x slower than real-time on a 147,456 processor BlueGene/P supercomputer. This work received 2009 ACM’s Gordon Bell Prize. In 2010, his group compiled, visualized, and analyzed the largest long-distance network currently in existence of the Macaque monkey brain.

Modha’s research has had significant practical impact on IBM's businesses. At IBM, he has won the Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper award (twice), an Outstanding Innovation Award, an Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, and Communication Systems Best Paper Award. He holds 29 US patents, and is currently an IBM Master Inventor. In 2010, Modha was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology.

Modha has authored over 50 publications in international journals and conferences. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a member of AAAS, ACM, and SfN and holds a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay and a Ph. D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UCSD.

About DAC

The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is recognized as the premier event for the design of electronic circuits and systems, and for electronic design automation (EDA) and silicon solutions. A diverse worldwide community representing more than 1,000 organizations attends each year, represented by system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, CAD managers, senior managers and executives to researchers and academicians from leading universities. Close to 60 technical sessions selected by a committee of electronic design experts offer information on recent developments and trends, management practices and new products, methodologies and technologies. A highlight of DAC is its exhibition and suite area with approximately 200 of the leading and emerging EDA, silicon, intellectual property (IP) and design services providers. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDA Consortium), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is supported by ACM's Special Interest Group on Design