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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Mark Gibson - President and 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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Naotaka Sato  - Secretary

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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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 is the Senior Director of Spectrum and Regulatory Affairs at Shure where he is responsible for leading Shure’s efforts to advocate for audio professionals as it pertains to industry regulations. Before coming to Shure, he spent more than 10 years with Nokia, most recently serving as Head of Spectrum Standardization, where he led the company’s efforts on global spectrum standardization and policy. He brings additional global regulatory experience from his previous role at Motorola for 14 years. He is currently the Chief Regulatory Officer of the WInnForum. He was part of the US delegation for the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) in Egypt to review the way radio spectrum is regulated around the world in several bands and is a member of the US delegation for various ITU meetings. He has several publications and patents related to spectrum usage and received his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from "Ecole Supérieure d'Electricité" (SUPELEC) in Paris, France.

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Claude Belisle - Member at Large

On his third stint on the WINNF Boards of Directors, after occupying the roles of CTO and President, Claude is back, this time at the Director level to share its experience in the field of SDR and technology management.  Claude’s career started in the Canadian Armed Forces as military officer.  He moved on to join the Communications Research Centre Canada as Military Satellite and Radio Communications engineer, and manager, before being appointed Vice-President Research. After this successful career within the government, Claude became CEO of NordiaSoft, a world leader in SDR/SCA development environment, providing strategic direction and leadership as well as the overall management of the company. Following the acquisition of NordiaSoft by VIAVI Solutions, Claude is now managing the SDR/SCA development program, and working with industry to facilitate the adoption of the technology.

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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Marc Adrat - Member at Large

Marc Adrat is Head of the Software Defined Radio (SDR) research group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE, Germany.  His research interests include digital signal processing for mobile tactical radio communications, waveform standardization, waveform application portability and interoperability, SDR software architecture frameworks as well as emerging technologies like in-band full-duplex communications. Since 2005, he acts as an advisor for military SDR programms of the German Bundeswehr. He is also leading research task groups at the science and technology organization of NATO, and he is actively contributing to several SDR-related working groups at EDA and the WInnForum.

Dr. Adrat received his Diplom and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from RWTH Aachen  University, Germany, in 1997 and 2003, respectively. He has published over 100 journal articles and conference papers. Since over 10 years is also a guest lecturer at RWTH Aachen University for the course of "Modern Channel Coding for Wireless Communications".  

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Max Solondz - Member at Large

Max Solondz is a subject matter expert within the Advanced Technology Strategy Group at the Verizon CTO Office.  In this role, he is responsible for radio network and product strategies built around new radio technologies and new frequency bands, as well as advocating for radio policies and radio standards with the FCC and other governmental agencies and international organizations.  Previously, Max was a product manager for RF base station products at Alcatel-Lucent, where he has formerly held several positions in technology development, technology planning, systems engineering, radio design, new product initiation and demonstration.  Previously, he held positions at Bell-Labs, ATT, and Lucent Technologies, over a period of 22 years, all in the development of radio systems for base station products.  He holds a Master’s degree from University of Massachusetts with a specialty in microwave engineering.  Over the last eight years, Max has been heavily involved with the CBRS band, working with the FCC since the initial shared-band concept was proposed, and working within the WINN Forum and OnGo (formerly the CBRS Alliance.)

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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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Dawn Szelc - Government/Non-Profit Group Representative

Dawn Szelc (pronounced “Sheltz”) has been with The MITRE Corporation for 25 years and is a Lead Communications Engineer. She is currently part of the Border Security Department of the Center for Securing the Homeland but has worked in various parts of MITRE with many different government customers. MITRE stood up the original organization which has become the Wireless Innovation Forum in 1996 as part of an innovative idea of Wayne Bonser, the PM for AFRL’s SPEAKeasy program, to develop interface standards for US government software radio in collaboration with industry. Dawn chaired several the Working Groups in the first 10 years of its inception. She assisted with establishing the Software Communications Architecture (SCA) as part of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) project in support of the JTRS Joint Program Office (JPO). Dawn has provided engineering support to numerous different software radio projects for multiple government customers, and she is currently supporting the DISA Defense Spectrum Organization on the CBRS spectrum sharing program as an RF Subject Matter Expert (SME). She has worked as a Radar/Sensor SME for DHS S&T and DHS CBP for RF, ground, and maritime surveillance, and Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) for ground surveillance. Earlier Dawn lead a team working on proof-of-concept demonstrations and risk mitigation efforts for cutting-edge COTS embedded and C3I systems for strategic, theater, and tactical environments.

Before coming to MITRE, Dawn worked 9 years at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) in Ann Arbor, MI as a research engineer designing and developing proof-of-concept Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems and embedded design projects.

Dawn has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MS in Electrical Engineering also from the University of Michigan with concentrations in Communications and Electromagnetics. Dawn was awarded a patent July 2011. She is a 37-year member of IEEE.