Title: My Ventures and Lessons Learned
Abstract: In my academic career, I have had several entrepreneurial ventures. First I helped lead the development of the world’s first single-chip video encoder based on H.263 in 1996 when SONY had a 4-chip solution. Then I founded a company in 1997 that produced the world’s first digital surveillance system over Internet when there was nothing but analog solutions. Around 2001 I co-found a start-up in Greece to develop the first smart antenna chipset. Finally in 2012 I founded Origin AI to pioneer wireless sensing by developing AI analytic on ambient Wi-Fi radio signal, a new sixth sense as I called it. Along the journey, there are many lessons learned – dos and don’ts. In this talk I would like to share some experience that may shed some light with some insight into the venture jungles and lands.
Biography: Dr. K. J. Ray Liu is the founder and CEO of Origin AI that pioneers AI for wireless sensing and indoor tracking. The invention of wireless AI won three prestigious CES Innovation Awards, including CES Best of Innovation in 2021.
Dr. Liu is 2022 IEEE President and CEO. He was the 2019 IEEE Vice President for Technical Activities and a member of IEEE Board of Director as Division IX Director in 2016-2017. He has also served as 2012-2013 President of IEEE Signal Processing Society, where he was Vice President for Publications and Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
He was Distinguished University Professor and Christine Kim Eminent Professor of Information Technology of the University of Maryland, College Park, from where he retired after over three decades of career in education. His research contributions encompass broad aspects of signal processing and communications. He has trained over 70 doctoral/postdoctoral students, of which 10 are now IEEE fellows.
Dr. Liu is the recipient the 2021 IEEE Fourier Technical Field Award for Signal Processing, the 2016 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, IEEE Signal Processing Society 2014 Society Award, and IEEE Signal Processing Society 2009 Technical Achievement Award. Recognized as a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher, he is a Fellow of IEEE, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors.
Dr. Liu received the B.S. degree from the National Taiwan University in 1983, and the Ph.D. degree from UCLA in 1990, both in electrical engineering.
