Gary May, Dean of GT ECE, (left) chats with keynote speaker Bob Hewes of Texas Instruments and Jim McLellan of the Center for Signal & Image Processing at the Georgia Tech Broadband Institute Industry Advisory board meeting opening reception May 1, 2006.

C. Michael Cassidy, president of the Georgia Research Alliance, talking with Turner Broadcasting’s Laurie Baird (left) and BellSouth’s Barbara Roden.

Bob Hewes, Texas Instruments’ Vice President and Director, Digital Signal Processing Solutions R&D lab in Dallas, delivered the keynote address to the Institute’s guests at the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center in Tech Square.

Jeannie Lee, graduate student advised by Prof. Nikil Jayant, explains her poster on “Mixed Initiative Multimedia” to Turner exec Laurie Baird during the Poster Show on Tuesday morning, May 2.

Georgia Tech Professor Faramarz Fekri explains his student’s sensor networks poster to Mitch Trott of HP-Labs, Palo Alto.

Zhensheng Jia, a grad student advised by Prof. Gee-Kung Chang, explains “Super- broadband Wired and Wireless Services Simultaneously” to Cox Communications’ Ben Bekele….

Milorad Cvijetic, NEC’s chief optical strategist, focuses on the work of Arshad Chowdhury, a student of GK Chang’s…. “Spectral Efficient Transmission of 40Gbps Data/Video services over 50Ghz spaced DWDM system for Metro & LANs”

Rick Younce, Tellabs’ Engineering Chief, with Oladeji Akanbi, examining Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed Passive Optical Networks…

AT&T’s Rich Cox shares some real-life experience with Oladeji Akanbi, a student of GK Chang’s, whose recent work focuses on Bi-Directional Dense WDM-PONs….

A student engages Arris exec George Bodeep….

Paul Pishall of HIG Ventures, (left) one of the Southeast region’s better known VC firms, listens as DoCoMo lab director Hiroshi Inamura explains his work….

Mina Sartipi, a grad student advised by Prof. Fekri, shares a lighter moment with HP’s Mitch Trott….

BellSouth’s Neale Hightower (left) and Lucent’s Bob Kamp listen as Mike Sun, graduate student of Prof. Doug Blough, explains his work on soft-phone security…. Vijay Balasubramaniyan looks on, dreaming of his future as a security tycoon…

Rajnish Kumar, a student advised by Prof. Umakishore Ramachandran, goes over his work on “Cross-Layering in Heterogeneous Sensor Stack” with Pradeep Samudra of Samsung….

Rajnish Kumar explains his work to BellSouth’s Barbara Roden.

Nitin Suresh, a student advised by Prof. Nikil Jayant, explains his work on “Video Quality Evaluation Techniques” to Comcast’s Vik Saxena.

AT&T Research exec Rich Cox listens as student Jeannie Lee explains her work on “Mixed Initiative Multimedia: Unified Design of User- Driven & System- Prompted Modalities.” Hers is a system to let cell phone users drill down to the content they want.

AT&T’s Rich Cox explaining the complexities of his research world to student Jeannie Lee…

John Yoakum, Nortel’s director of business development, champion of emerging opportunities and disruptive technologies, listens to Alper Akanser, advised by Prof. Mary Ann Ingram, as he details his work on Correlated Sensor Networks.

Dihong Tian, a student advised by Georgia Tech-Savannah Prof. Ghassan Al- Regib, with Cisco’s Tom O’Donnell and John Toebes. They liked Dihong’s work so much they hired him!

During lunch, Dallas Clement, Cox Communications’ Senior Vice President of Strategy & Development, shared his insights into coming communications, computing and content processing challenges….

NEC’s optical strategist, Milorad Cvijetic, closed the luncheon speaker session with his insights into “Optical Computing in a Converged Networks Environment.”

Breakout sessions to discover the future directions of broadband followed lunch…. Here, GTBI Associate Director GK Chang (at head of table) discusses the future of telecommunications technologies and services with (from left) Nortel’s Ken Gold and John Yoakum, Arris’ George Bodeep, and Cisco’s Tom O’Donnell.

Associate Director Mary Ann Ingram in her breakout session with (from left) Seong Uk-Choi of Samsung, ECE Research Scientist Benny Bing, Tellabs’ Rick Younce, Cox’s Ben Bekele and HP’s Mitch Trott.

After a debriefing session, the Spring 2006 Industry Advisory Board meeting adjourned at 4:30 PM EST. The next IAB will be in the fall. Please contact if you’d like to attend.