Management

Tom Carter

Founder, President, CEO

Dr. Thomas Carter is co-founder, President and CEO of TrellisWare Technologies, Inc., where he leads the strategic direction, business development and daily operations of the company. Prior to the incorporation of TrellisWare Technologies, Dr. Carter played a major role in the growth of ViaSat, Inc., and the technologies that eventually seeded TrellisWare Technologies, Inc.

Dr. Carter joined ViaSat in 1990 as V.P. of Engineering when there were fewer than 30 employees and annual revenue of less than $1M and helped grow it to more than 700 employees with annual revenue above $100M. He served as General Manager for ViaSat's Electronic Systems Group which accounted for approximately 90% of ViaSat's yearly revenues until the acquisition of ViaSat Satellite Networks from Scientific Atlanta in 2000. During this time, he identified and developed PSP™ technology, established related licensing relationships, and acquired substantial external funding for further research and development.

Prior to 1990 Dr. Carter held numerous senior positions at TRW including Program Manager for one of the world's largest integrated avionic communication systems, System Engineering Department Manager, and technical leadership positions for a variety of advanced communications systems.

Dr. Carter brings the technical background to understand the depths of the company's technology and its applications as well as over 20 years of management experience including marketing, customer development, contractual and administration, and full P&L responsibility.

Ph.D., EE, University of Southern California, 1983
M.S., EE, Rice University, 1977
B.S., EE, Rice University, 1976

Jeff Harris

Vice President, Wireless and System Solutions

As head of TrellisWare's hardware and systems products businesses, Jeff Harris brings 20 years of experience developing products at the cutting edge of the RF industry, from product development to marketing and sales in both commercial and Federal markets. Joining TrellisWare in 2006, Mr. Harris is in charge of building TrellisWare's systems and hardware solutions business for both Federal and commercial markets.

Prior to joining TrellisWare, Mr. Harris spent six years leading product introduction efforts in the ultra wideband (UWB) fabless semiconductor market segment for pioneers General Atomics and XtremeSpectrum. Prior to that, Mr. Harris led advanced development businesses in RF communications and surveillance systems at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and System Planning Corporation. Mr. Harris holds Masters and Bachelors Degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from George Mason University.

Jeff Thomas

Vice President, Operations and Alliances

As head of TrellisWare's operations and alliances, Jeff Thomas brings over 20 years of senior leadership experience in developing and managing alliances and relationships with major domestic and international technology companies and customers. Joining TrellisWare in 2001, Mr. Thomas is in charge of all customer and supplier relationships as well as business operations overseeing alliances, contracts, subcontracts, procurement, facilities , quality, and security functions.

Prior to joining TrellisWare Mr. Thomas held positions as the Director of Contracts and Material Management for TRW's communications and avionics unit and Director of Business Strategies for TRW's unmanned aerial vehicle unit. He holds a Masters Degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California and Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Management from California State University Dominguez Hills.

Metin Bayram

Director, FEC and High Speed Modems

Mr. Bayram leads TrellisWare's FEC and High Speed Modems business area including oversight of all FEC product development, core IP licensing to commercial and Federal market applications, embedded IP integration execution, and post-sales customer support. Having joined TrellisWare in 2002, he is responsible for expanding the operations of this business area into new and diverse markets.

Prior to joining TrellisWare, Mr. Bayram worked as a Management Consultant at Bain & Company on a merger integration project for S&P 500 clients and as Staff Engineer in new product development at Motorola's mobile phone business unit. As part of this work, he worked on 3G cell phone receiver architectures including creating more efficient signal processing for better coverage and faster response time as well as feasibility for new architectures.

Mr. Bayram holds both Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rice University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Mark Johnson

Founder, Chief Engineer

Mark Johnson is co-founder and Chief Engineer at TrellisWare. As Chief Engineer, he is responsible for all product design activities. Mark has 20 years experience in the fields of digital signal processing (DSP) and communications systems engineering. Mr. Johnson served as a chief engineer for terrestrial wireless networking programs at ViaSat, Inc., before joining TrellisWare. He was central to the development of ViaSat's Link-16 (Government Broadband Secure Mobile Wireless Networking) technology, including development of a novel technique to provide a ten-fold increase in data rate without affecting transmit spectrum. He also led engineering for all of ViaSat's PSP development and extension efforts. He has served as technical lead for the development of TrellisWare hardware and software implementations in the following areas: Cellular Capacity Improvement via CCI Mitigation; Enhanced Cellular Performance in Dynamic Channels; Adaptive Antenna Array Processing; Direction Finding (Cellular 911); Broadband Wireless Networking;

Prior to ViaSat, Mr. Johnson held various engineering positions at TRW, where he was responsible for the systems engineering, analysis, and design of a variety of software defined radio and adaptive antenna array systems. He holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rensselar Polytechnic Institute.

Keith Chugg

Founder, Chief Scientist

Dr. Chugg is a co-founder of TrellisWare and is recognized as a leading researcher in the field of digital communication theory. He has published extensively in the areas of advanced signal processing for communications and storage systems, with over 50 publications to date. Dr. Chugg has consulted broadly to the telecommunications industry and held positions at TRW, Lincom Corp., and Qualcomm Inc. His research interests include signaling, detection, and estimation for digital communication and data storage systems as well as efficient implementation of advanced signal processing algorithms. While an active contributor to TrellisWare, Dr. Chugg maintains his professor position in the Electrical Engineering Department at University of Southern California. He holds several patents in advanced signal processing including AID and efficient implementations of parallel, iterative trellis-based processing. Dr. Chugg holds a PhD and Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering from Harvey Mudd College.

Andreas Polydoros

Founder, Chairman of the Technical Advisory Board

Dr. Polydoros is co-founder of TrellisWare and Chairman of its Technical Advisory Board. He is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in the field of communications theory, having published more than 100 technical papers in the area. He is co-inventor of PSP™ and co-holder of its US patent. He has consulted extensively to the telecommunications industry over the last two decades, was the recipient of a 1986 NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, and is a Fellow of the IEEE. His research interests include statistical communication theory with applications to transmission in uncertain environments, spread-spectrum systems, OFDM and MIMO, signal detection and classification, and multi-user radio networks. While an active contributor to TrellisWare, Dr. Polydoros maintains his professor position in the Electronics Division at the University of Athens in Greece. Dr. Polydoros holds a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from State University of New York at Buffalo, and a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering from National Technical University of Athens, Greece.