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Tech event brings
Berkeley—and China—closer to Silicon Valley
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Hong
Llang Lu was president and CEO of Unison World, Inc., then
of Kyocera Unison, before he founded UTStarcom. He went to
China, he says, because he didn’t think “the country’s
telecommunications infrastructure could go anywhere but up.”
PHOTO COURTESY UTSTARCOM |
When Hong Llang Lu (B.S.’78 CE) went to China looking for
business opportunities in 1991, he says, his mother was the first
one to tell him he was “out of his mind.” But what
he found there—a bustling world that was without basic telephone
service—enabled the Taiwan-born entrepreneur to build what
is now one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the
world.
Lu is president, CEO, and founder of Alameda-based UTStarcom,
which doubled its 2002 revenue from $1 billion to $1.96 billion
in 2003 during a tough business climate when many high-tech businesses
failed. UTStarcom was named by the World Economic Forum this year
to its Technology Pioneers list, 30 companies making products
with “the capacity to transform the way society and business
operate.”
Keynote speaker at the College of Engineering’s fourth annual
Berkeley in Silicon Valley last spring, Lu gave a talk entitled
“Focus on China: Breaking through the Great Wall.”
He chronicled his experience discovering a void and creating a
business plan to fill it with wireless technology. Lu is now working
to bring other regions like Vietnam, Haiti, Mali, and Cameroon
the same product—the Personal Access System—that,
because of its affordability, has given hundreds of villages and
cities in developing nations communications tools they never had
access to before. And at the same time it has made Lu a successful
businessman.
About 150 faculty, alumni, friends and future students attended
the faculty symposium and networking event designed to bring the
Berkeley campus to the Silicon Valley. Cosponsored by Sun Microsystems
and held at its Santa Clara campus, this year’s event had
as its theme “Engineering a Better World,” with six
faculty presentations and a panel discussion on Berkeley Engineering
projects like Lu’s venture.
Faculty speakers discussed their own research projects, including
Greg Fenves of CEE on earthquakes, Dan Fletcher of BioE on cell
biomechanics, Roger Howe of EECS on micromachines, William Kastenberg
of NE with attorney Gloria Hauser-Kastenberg on engineering ethics,
Vivek Subramanian of EECS on printed electronics, and Yuri Suzuki
of MSE on data storage. The panel featured Marti Hearst of the
School of Information Management and Systems, along with Tom Kalil
and Eric Brewer speaking on the College’s National Science
Foundation–funded ICT4B project.
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