Board of Directors

Peter Jones, Cisco

CHAIRMAN, VICE PRESIDENT, AND BOARD MEMBER

Peter Jones has been defining Cisco Catalyst system architecture since 2005. He became a Distinguished Engineer in 2018, in part because of his contributions to the NBASE-T Alliance and groups such as IEEE 802.3. Peter is Chairman and Vice President of the NBASE-T Alliance, driving development of the ecosystem from components to market education. He is also actively involved in the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards development work, both enterprise technologies and the emergence of Ethernet to transform building and industrial automation.

Peter has had a long and broad career in the networking industry and is one of the key architects behind the Catalyst 3850/3650 products, as well as the Catalyst 9000 family. He speaks frequently at Cisco Live and has been recognized as a Distinguished Speaker. Peter is passionate about evolving networking infrastructure and making the technology truly “consumable”. He uses story telling to build consensus in teams and is committed to talent development through mentoring.

Peter holds a BSc in computer science from the University of Western Australia. You can find him online at LinkedIn, @petergjones and about.me/petergjones.

LK Bhupathi, Aquantia

 PRESIDENT, BOARD MEMBER, AND MARKETING CHAIR

LK Bhupathi has been working with data networking products within the semiconductor industry for over two decades. He is currently Senior Director, Product Marketing at Aquantia where he leads Product Management and Marketing activities for Multi-Gigabit PHYs, Controllers and related products. Prior to joining Aquantia, LK served in the roles of Senior Director of Marketing at Tabula and Director of Marketing at Marvell. He held product management and marketing responsibilities for diverse products ranging from PHYs and NIC controllers to switches, embedded processors and FPGAs.

Previously, LK has led various design engineering efforts at Dallas Semiconductor and Fujitsu Microelectronics. He holds an MBA degree from University of California, Berkeley, an MS degree in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University and a B.Tech degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Joseph Byrne, NXP

TREASURER AND BOARD MEMBER

Joseph Byrne is senior manager of strategic marketing for NXP’s Digital Networking Group focusing on analyzing market opportunities, assessing competitors, and forging alliances. Prior to joining NXP, Joe was an analyst at The Linley Group, where he focused on communications and semiconductors, providing strategic guidance on product decisions to senior semiconductor executives. Prior to working at The Linley Group, he was a principal analyst at Gartner, leading the firm’s coverage of wired communications semiconductors. There, he advised semiconductor suppliers on strategy, marketing and investing.

Joe started his career at SMOS Systems after graduating with a BS in engineering from Duke University. He spent three years at SMOS as part of the R&D engineering team developing high-performance RISC microprocessors. He then returned to school for an MBA, which he received with high distinction from the University of Michigan.

Dave Chalupsky, Intel

SECRETARY AND BOARD MEMBER

David Chalupsky is a principal engineer and product architect for Intel’s Network Division. With Intel since 1988, Dave has held a variety of hardware development and engineering management roles which began with single board industrial computer design. In 1992, he developed his first 10BASE-T repeater product and has been in the Ethernet business ever since, holding roles in board development, ASIC design, applications, and validation. During his tenure at Intel he has been on the leading edge of Ethernet transitions, from 10Mbit to 100Gbit Ethernet products.

Dave made key contributions to bringing Wake on LAN management functionality to 100Mbit Ethernet NICs, bringing 1000BASE-T connectivity to the PC motherboard, and higher speed networking to the server. An active contributor to the advancement of the Ethernet ecosystem, Dave has chaired several BASE-T-related standards development projects in IEEE 802.3, and leads the Higher Speed Networking and BASE-T subcommittees of the Ethernet Alliance. Dave holds a BS in Computer Engineering from California State University, Chico, a Masters in EE/CE from Portland State University, and eight U.S. patents.

Ron Cates, Marvell

BOARD MEMBER

Ron Cates is the Senior Director of Product Marketing for PHY products at Marvell Semiconductors where he is responsible for a broad range of Ethernet PHY devices spanning data rates from 10Mbps to 100Gbps. Prior to Marvell, he held executive marketing positions associated with Ethernet protocols at PLX, Mindspeed and Solarflare Communications. Ron holds a BSEE and MSEE from UCLA and an MBA from San Diego State University.

George Zimmerman, CME Consulting

CONTRIBUTOR BOARD MEMBER

George Zimmerman is an independent consultant, specializing in physical layer communications technology. Over the past 25 years, he has been a defining force in the development of multiple wired technologies, including 2.5G, 5G, 10G, 25G, and 40GBASE-T, Energy Efficient Ethernet, various ANSI and ITU-T standard DSL technologies, and contributes to cabling specifications both for Power over Ethernet and new BASE-T technologies. George serves as Technical Committee Chair for the Ethernet Alliance, and on the board of the NBASE-T Alliance.

George contributed to PoE+ (802.3at) and is a contributor to the IEEE 802.3bt (4 pair Power over Ethernet) and IEEE 802.3bu (Power over single-pair data lines). He is Chair of the IEEE 802.3 10Mbps Single Pair Ethernet Task Force and was Editor for both the 2.5G/5GBASE-T (IEEE 802.3bz) and 25G/40GBASE-T (IEEE 802.3bq) standards. As a consultant, his clients include networking systems, cabling infrastructure, and physical-layer silicon companies.

George’s technical interests are focused on communications and signal processing near the fundamental limits and energy efficiency, and he holds more than a dozen patents related to BASE-T Ethernet and Energy-efficient Ethernet technology, a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, and an BS in XXXX from Stanford University.

Committee Chairs

Amrik Bains, Cisco

Technical Chair

Amrik Bains is a Hardware Principal Engineer and has been with Cisco for 11 years. Amrik works on system architecture, designing and implementing (Access Switches, ASIC, PHYs, CPU) for Cisco Campus switching, as well as standardization of 2.5G / 5G BASE-T Ethernet as NBASE-T Technical Working Group chair and in IEEE 802.3bz.
Amrik received a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from University of Aston (England) specializing in Electronic Communication Systems.

Management Team

Jen Franklin, VTM Group

Jen Franklin is the General Manager of the Initiatives & Alliances department at VTM Group. In this role she is responsible for managing the company’s Account Managers, as well as providing consulting and association management to VTM clients.