NETovations Founders
 Robert S. Fish |
 Alexander D. Gelman |
 Alan Kaplan |
Robert S. Fish (PhD, Cognitive Science, Stanford University) is on the faculty of the Computer Science Department of Princeton University. He is also President-elect of the IEEE Standards Association. He was previously Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President of Operations of Mformation Technologies, a leading company in providing software for mobile device management. Prior to that he was the Managing Director of the Panasonic Princeton Laboratory (PPRL) and Vice President of Panasonic Research and Development Company of America. He was director of the laboratory under its various names (Matsushita Information Technology Laboratory, Panasonic Information and Networking Technologies Laboratory, Panasonic Digital Networking Laboratory, currently Panasonic Princeton Laboratory) from 1997-2007. PPRL was the principal US communications, networking, and computer sciences laboratory of the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company of Osaka, Japan.
At Panasonic, Rob's main endeavor was to accelerate Panasonic's movement from a supplier of stand-alone, media-centric, consumer electronic appliances into the era of constantly-connected, network-application-enabled, and computationally sophisticated devices.
To do this, he pursued research and development programs in networked-media security, secure embedded operating systems, networked DTV middleware, mobile-to-home protocols, personal area networking, ubiquitous peer-to-peer application-layer networks and services, and Internet Protocol TV. Besides technology development, he has designed standardization and intellectual property strategies that maximize the eventual market size and profitability for networked consumer electronics products.
Prior to joining Panasonic in 1997, Rob was Executive Director of the Multimedia Networking Research Department of Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) in Morristown, New Jersey. His work at Bellcore included creating some of the US's earliest broadband video communications and residential broadband networking trials.
Rob received his Ph.D from Stanford University in 1981 and joined Bell Laboratories upon receiving his degree. He is a member of the IEEE Communications and Computer Societies and of the IEEE Standardization Association. He is a member of the IEEE Board of Directors for 2019-2020. He is also a member of the IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Standards Association Board of Governors. Author of numerous papers (both scholarly and otherwise), Rob holds eight United States patents.
Alexander D. Gelman (PhD, Electrical Engineering, City University of New York) was Chief Scientist at Panasonic Princeton Research Laboratory managing research programs in consumer communications and networking from 1998-2007. From 1984-1998, Alex was with Bellcore, as Director, Residential Internet Access Architectures Research. He pioneered the DSLAM/Router architecture for DSL-based Broadband Access, served as advisor for Bell Atlantic on the ADSL trial, and architected Telia's DSL Multimedia and Internet Access trial. Alex has numerous publications and holds some of the earliest DSL system patents (e.g., on xDSL-based Access Router). He organized ComSoc conferences and workshops, and served in various editorial roles in IEEE Communications Magazine, JSAC, and JCN. Alex has served on the inaugural Steering Committees for IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, and the ICME. He initiated the IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conferences, ComSoc's Power Line Communications technical activities, the creation of ComSoc's Standards Board, and the sponsorship of standardization in the areas of PLC and cognitive radio. Alex served as Chair of the Multimedia Technical Committee, VP-Society Relations, and VP-Membership Development. He currently serves on the Board of Governors of IEEE Standards Association, on the IEEE Transnational Committee, and as ComSoc's Director of Standards.
Alan Kaplan (PhD, Computer Science, University of Massachuetts) was the Department Head for Middleware and Software Technologies in the Panasonic Princeton Research Laboratory from 2001-2007. Projects in his department involve developing novel techniques and mechanisms that enable a broad range of interactive applications, multimedia services and pervasive communications for consumers. Examples include peer-to-peer communications, iDTV (OCAP/MHP) middleware, mobile-to-home access and control, and Java instant messaging and presence. Alan served as Panasonic's Alternate Member to the Java Community Process J2ME Executive Committee. He is the former chair of the Developers Interest Group in the Open Mobile Alliance.
Prior to Panasonic, Alan was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina from 1997-2001. His research activities involved investigating and developing tools and techniques supporting software development, object-oriented databases and interoperability. Alan created some of the earliest automated environments for generating Java-C++ software libraries. His teaching activities focused on programming languages and software engineering, both at the graduate and undergraduate level. From 1996-1997, Alan was a member of the Department of Computer Science at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, where he developed the first introductory Java programming course for the department.
Alan received the B.S. degree in Computer Science from Duke University, Durham, NC, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. He is a member of the IEEE Computer and Communication Societies and the Association for Computing Machinery. Alan has served on the Steering Committee of the IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference since its inception in 2004.