Board of Directors

Manuel Uhm - Chair of the Board of Directors   

Manuel Uhm is the NI SDR Director of Marketing at National Instruments and Ettus Research, a National Instruments brand, the leader in Software Defined Radio platforms. Manuel has business responsibility for the Ettus USRP (GNU Radio open source-based), NI USRP (LabVIEW-based), ATCA and mmWave product portfolios. As such, he has responsibility for SDR portfolio management including product strategy, roadmaps, and pricing. Manuel is also the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Wireless Innovation Forum (formerly the SDR Forum), which is responsible for the SCA (Software Communications Architecture) standard for military radios, and CBRS (Citizen’s Broadband Radio Service) for spectrum sharing between naval radar and commercial broadband services. He has served on the Board since 2003 in various roles including Chair of the Board of Directors, Chair of the Markets Committee, Chair of the User Requirements Committee, and Chief Financial Officer.

Previously, Manuel Uhm was the Vice President of Marketing at Coherent Logix, where he was responsible for all marketing and sales activities related to their 100-core DSP product portfolio. Prior to that, Manuel was the Marketing Director of Mobile for MIPS Technologies where he was responsible for leading MIPS’ penetration into the mobile industry, including applications processors, LTE UE baseband processors and mobile connectivity processors. Prior to joining MIPS, Manuel was the Director of Wireless Communications for Xilinx, the leading supplier of programmable logic devices, where he grew the wireless business into Xilinx’s #1 end market. 

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John Glossner - President and Chair of the Forum

Dr. John Glossner is CEO of Optimum Semiconductor Technologies, Inc. dba General Processor Technologies, the US division of China-based Wuxi DSP. He also serves as President of the Heterogeneous System Architecture Foundation (HSAF). Prior to joining OST, Dr. Glossner co-founded Sandbridge Technologies and served as EVP & CTO. Prior to Sandbridge, he managed both technical and business activities in DSP and Broadband Communications at IBM and Lucent/Motorola’s Starcore. Dr. Glossner received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from TU Delft in the Netherlands, M.S. degrees in E.E. and Eng. Mgt. from NTU, and holds a B.S.E.E. degree from Penn State. He has more than 120 publications and 38 issued patents.

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Mark Gibson - Vice-President/Vice-Chair of the Forum

With almost 35 years of spectrum management experience, Mark Gibson is responsible for developing domestic and international business opportunities for Comsearch.  In addition to leading Comsearch’s technical and business development efforts numerous wireless and spectrum-related products and services, he has led efforts to address spectrum sharing between Federal government and commercial users.  He leads CommScope’s CBRS efforts on the Spectrum Access System/Environmental Sensing Capability.  He is on the board of the Wireless Innovation Forum and is a co-chair of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, where he has also co-chaired working groups related to spectrum sharing and data exchange issues.  He has led Comsearch’s spectrum management efforts including the development of spectrum sharing analysis protocols and sharing criteria, as well as development of Comsearch’s engineering services and software products.  He has led Comsearch’s efforts in working with the American Hospital Association as their technical partner for WMTS frequency coordination.  He has authored several papers on spectrum sharing and relocation and has advised numerous wireless participants in their system design.  He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

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Ken Dingman - Treasurer and Chief Technical Officer

Ken is a Sr. Engineering Manager with more than 10 years experience at Harris Corp. RF Communications Div.   He is currently responsible for HF, Narrow Band LOS, and SATCOM Waveform applications in the Falcon III family of radios.  Previous responsibilities include JTRS Cluster 1 VULOS and HaveQuick Engineering Project Lead, Harris RF-7800M-MP Product Engineering Manager and PC/PDA Applications Group Manager.  He hold Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Master of Science in Software Development and Management degrees from the Rochester Institute of Technology.  Ken has participated in the Wireless Innovation Forum for a number of years and is currently the co-chair of the Coordinating Committee on International SCA Standards Steering Group.

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Kurt Schaubach - Secretary

Kurt Schaubach brings over 25 years of wireless industry experience to Federated Wireless, where he plays a key role in developing technologies and new business strategies to create the next-generation architecture of broadband wireless. Kurt was most recently Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) where he was responsible for the company’s wireless and broadband technology strategy and product development. Previously, Kurt served in various engineering roles at NextWave Wireless, LCC International, and Southwestern Bell and has also served as a technology consultant to wireless network operators, equipment manufacturers, and semiconductor suppliers.  He was a founding member of a publicly traded wireless broadband and multimedia software company and led the acquisition and integration of two wireless infrastructure companies. Kurt has been active in spectrum development, management, and policy matters throughout his career.  He currently co-chairs the Spectrum Sharing Committee of the Wireless Innovation Forum.  He received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech.

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Andrew Clegg - Chief Technical Officer

Andrew Clegg is Spectrum Engineering Lead for Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL). He is currently focused on shared spectrum opportunities in mid-band spectrum, among other things. He was previously program director for spectrum management at the U.S. National Science Foundation, where he was the creator of a $60 million research program to support enhanced access to the radio spectrum. Prior to NSF, he was lead member of technical staff for Cingular Wireless (now AT&T Mobility), a senior engineer at Comsearch, and a research scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory. He holds a PhD in radio astronomy from the University of Virginia. 

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Richard Bernhardt - Chief Marketing Officer

Richard Bernhardt, who currently serves with the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) as their National Spectrum Adviser.  He is also the chairman of the Spectrum Sharing Committee (SSC), Operations Working Group (WG5) for the Forum, serving also on the group's Steering Committee and chair of the marketing function. WInnForum's SSC is the principal standards development organization for the telecom and wireless industries Citizens Broadband Radio Network (CBRS). Mr. Bernhardt is also the co-chair of the Fixed Wireless Access task group of the Business Wireless Group of the CBRS Alliance and the liaison representative for WISPA.   Prior to these roles, he served as the Senior Director of Marketing and Communications for Streakwave Wireless Inc., a global wireless VAD for the wireless industry; and previously in a variety of senior roles in technology and start-up companies.  Mr. Bernhardt has also served since 2006 on the board of directors and as chair of the executive board of the humanitarian organization, Bangla Hope, an orphanage and school system for destitute and orphaned children in need, located in Bangladesh.  Mr. Bernhardt is married with one son.  He attended California Western School of Law in San Diego, CA and holds a Juris Doctorate degree as well as dual bachelor's degrees in communications and political science from the University of California, Davis.

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 Prakash Moorut - Chief Regulatory Officer

 Prakash Moorut has over 20 years of experience in spectrum research, strategy, regulation, standardization and industry activities. He is currently the global Head of Spectrum Standardization for Nokia (NYSE: NOK). In this role, he is responsible for defining and executing Nokia's spectrum strategy and leading Nokia's engagement on spectrum standardization and policy work with customers, in industry groups and in regional/international groups such as ITU-R, CEPT, CITEL, APT and with national regulatory authorities such as the FCC, Germany’s BNetzA, China's MIIT, etc. He has earned various industry recognitions, including for the work he led to open 3.5GHz to mobility in Europe and more recently, as Chair of WInnForum Spectrum Sharing Committee Working Group 3 that defined the detailed protocols for data and communications across the various open interfaces within the Citizens Broadband Radio Service system. He was also the Technical Program Co-Chair of the 7th IEEE Symposium on New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN 2014) and currently chairs the mmWave Coalition whose mission is to advocate for the use of spectrum above 95 GHz. Before joining Nokia, he worked for Motorola where he created and led a customer facing spectrum engineering group located in USA, France, and China. He has several publications and patents related to spectrum usage. He received his MSEE degree from "Ecole Supérieure d'Electricité" (SUPELEC) in Paris, France. 

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Neeti Tandon - Member at Large

Over 25 years of experience as a subject matter expert on a broad range of topics including technology evaluation, spectrum protection, new band acquisition, interference mitigation and radio capacity modelling.  Internally, as a lead member of the technical team, Neeti supports AT&T’s regulatory and strategy teams on technical position for various FCC’s NPRM proceedings including AWS, 700 MHz, 600 MHz, 3.5 GHz. Externally, she has chaired position papers and sub committees under CSMAC, 4G Americas etc. on RF and spectrum related topics . Neeti has experience in developing modelling tools to perform network capacity and TV repacking analysis for AT&T’s strategic business needs. Neeti has been involved in ongoing discussions between the FCC and Industry Canada and Mexico on spectrum management and network co-existence efforts for the 700 MHz band along the border.  She has received her Master’s in Computer Science from George Mason University.

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Jean Philippe Delahaye - Member at Large

Jean-Philippe Delahaye is the SDR technical expert for the French SDR tactical military radio program called CONTACT at the French armament procurement agency DGA. Since he joined the DGA in the Information Warfare Technology Center called “DGA Information Superiority Unit” in 2007, Jean-Philippe has worked on SDR and specifically on hardware, software architecture and standard technologies. He is also involved in the European level in the ESSOR Programme and in the AED SDR Standardization Strategic Guidance Working Group.  Since several years, he is involved SDR Standardization in the WinnF SDS Committee and the Advisory Council. Jean-Philippe received his MS in Telecommunications from the National Institute of Telecommunications “Telecom ParisSud” and his Master Degree in Electronics from the University of Paris 11, both in 2003. He received his Ph.D. Degree in Electronics from the University of Rennes 1, France in 2007 with research interest focused on reconfigurable heterogeneous architecture in SDR.

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Douglas Knisely - Member at Large

Douglas Knisely is a Principal Engineer at Qualcomm, where he focuses on Spectrum Sharing industry standardization activities, including serving as an active contributor to the WInnForum Spectrum Sharing Committee.  He has an extensive background in cellular industry standards, having led many radio and core network efforts in 3GPP2, 3GPP, Broadband Forum, Small Cell Forum, and other groups.  Prior to joining Qualcomm, Doug was with Airvana, where he led the initial Femtocell standardization activities for 3GPP and 3GPP2 3G and 4G radio technologies and Femtocell device management, and made significant contributions to the seminal industry standards for Femtocells and Small Cells, as well as leading MAC standardization for cdma2000 2G, 3G, and 4G radio standards for many years in Lucent Technologies.  His early career activities included architecture and development management for early multiprocessor blade computing systems and communications and protocol architecture, design, and implementation in AT&T Bell Laboratories.

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David Gurney - Member at Large

Dave Gurney is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in the CTO organization at Motorola Solutions in Schaumburg, IL.  In his 30 year career at Motorola, he has worked on numerous communications systems, including US and Japan Digital Cellular, CDMA, Wimax, LTE, cable, FTTH, RFID and LMR systems.  He has also worked extensively on shared spectrum techniques (CBRS/geo-location databases), digital signal processing, communications system and propagation modeling, as well as FPGA hardware development.  He holds a BSEE degree from the University of Illinois, and an MSEE degree from NTU.  He currently holds 47 patents, and is recognized as a Master Innovator and Science Advisory Board Associate at Motorola Solutions.   

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Eric Nicollet - Member at Large

Eric Nicollet has 20 years of experience in the area of embedded SDR with Thales Communications and Security, France, committed to better realize the SDR promises down to the heart of radio products: baseband and radio processing.

He initiated the WInnF Transceiver Facility and Time Service Facility, contributed actively in elaboration of SCA 4.1, and has served many years as co-chair of the WInnF committee on International SDR Standards. Eric was instrumental in definition of the portability-focused ESSOR Base Waveform methodology.

He was awarded the WInnF 2009 International Achievement Award for the first Transceiver Facility specification, and the 2014 President’s Award for his work in support of SCA 4.1 development for better support of resource constrained processors.

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Naotaka Sato  - Member at Large

Naotaka Sato has over 25 years of experience in wireless communication research, regulation, standardization and industry activities. He has been engaged in development of CDMA cellular phone and research and development of RF systems for 3G cellular phone system in Sony Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, Sony Electronics, Inc., San Diego California, USA and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Japan, Inc., Tokyo, Japan. Since April 2005, he has been working on cognitive radio systems. His research interests include dynamic spectrum access and RF system architecture. He has been contributing to 3GPP RAN1, ETSI TC RRS, IEEE 1900.6, IEEE 802.19, Wi-Fi Alliance, Wireless Innovation Forum and CBRS Alliance, and served Rapporteur in ETSI and Task Group Chair in IEEE. He is the project leader of Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) developments. He received his B.E. and M.E. degree in electrical engineering from Tokyo University of Science, Japan.

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R.Muralidharan - Member at Large

R. Muralidharan, Senior Member IEEE, is a Systems Engineering professional in Computer and Communications Engineering fields for 32 years and is currently CTO at Strategic Electronics Division of Tata Power SED, Mumbai, India. At SED, he is responsible for design and development of mission critical real time solutions for Indian Defense. He graduated in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum, India, and did Post Graduation in Electrical Engineering (Computer) during 1977-79 at IIT Bombay, India. In 1987, the then Indian Prime Minister Mr Rajiv Gandhi had invited him to be a member of the Distinguished Young Scientists team.

Mr. Muralidharan, an IEEE volunteer, is a Past chair of IEEE India Council and Bombay Section, He was an IEEE ComSoc Standards board member during 2008 to 2010.

Muralidharan has been actively associated for the last 3 years with the annual conferences of the Forum in chairing technical sessions, as member of TPC, presenting papers etc. He works in the Forum committees for Tactical Radios and SCA Next.

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David Hagood - Member at Large

David Hagood received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Wichita State University in 1987. He joined IFR Systems in 1990. IFR Systems was later purchased by Aeroflex, itself recently purchased by Cobham. He worked on several radio service monitor and spectrum analyzer projects (AN-900, TS-4317, 3900, 7200), and was software architectural lead on the COM-120B and 2975 (IFR Systems' first SDR test set). He has developed testing systems targeting military tactical radios, avionics, and land mobile radio. Currently, he is the lead SCA evangelist within Aeroflex, leading development of SCA based radio test systems. He also holds a US Amateur Extra class radio license (N0YKG).

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Paul Challoner - Large Company Representative

Paul Challoner, VP Network Product Solutions for Ericsson North America, based in Plano, Texas is responsible for radio solutions including 4G, 5G & IOT. Prior to his current role, Challoner worked as Head of Product Line Wi-Fi and Head of Ericsson’s CDMA Product Line.

Challoner joined Ericsson in 2010 from Nortel where he held executive roles leading the GSM product group, Intelligent Networks and Broadband Wireless businesses. He has global experience working in the US, Canada, France, India and the UK. With 20 years in the telecom industry he possesses extensive industry experience and has innovated bringing numerous radio products to market specializing in the field of wireless communication. 

Challoner holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Brunel University, London, UK.

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 Alberto Quintana- Medium Company Representative

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Pierre-Jean Muller - Small Company Representative

Pierre-Jean Muller is a telecommunications executive veteran with 25 years of international experience within the wireless industry including Bell Labs, NEC and Huawei. Pierre-Jean is the co-founder and CEO of RED Technologies, a leading start-up of innovative spectrum management, the premier enabler of Licensed Shared Access (LSA) with its LSAlive© cloud-based solution and SAS Administrator applicant for the 3.5 GHz CBRS band in the US. Pierre-Jean is a frequent speaker at international technology conferences and has hosted several elected positions in ETSI and 3GPP. He is the author of 20+ patents in the telecommunication field.

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Louise Lamont - Government/Non-Profit Representative

Louise Lamont is currently working at the Communications Research Centre (CRC), the Canadian Federal Government’s primary research and development lab for communications technologies. CRC works closely with Canadian regulators; providing advice and recommending technical solutions pertaining to sustainable spectrum management. As a program manager, she has been involved with both civilian and military research projects. On the military side, she was a contributor to programs such as the Soldier Systems technology roadmap, the Air Force Science & Technology program for persistent surveillance, and the land tactical C4ISR (Command and Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance). She led a large research program titled “Making Better Use of Spectrum,” acting as the client relation manager (CRM), the scientific authority and the program manager. She is currently responsible for setting strategic research directions for dynamic spectrum sharing at CRC that address both market priorities and client needs. In the Wireless Innovation Forum she has been active in various spectrum sharing projects

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