Steve was a co-founder and HW system architect at Caymas Systems where he helped create an award winning line of identity driven NAC Appliances. Prior to that, he was a key member of the early start-up engineering team at Cerent Corp. (acquired by Cisco Systems). He was senior HW designer and architect of Ethernet products for the industry leading Cisco ONS15454. Before Cerent, Steve worked for Next Level Communications where he was a HW designer and architect on various telecommunications and networking products. Steve has over 27 years of experience in HW design and architecture with extensive experience in Ethernet switching, SONET, timing, ASICs, FPGAs, Embedded FW, and DSP. Steve spent over 12 years of his professional career at Hewlett Packard as a hardware designer and principal engineer/scientist, responsible for a variety of networking product designs and architectures, including hubs, switches and network adapters. Steve began inventing at a very early age and during these years created many custom devices and systems. A private telephone network and an electronic rocket launch system are just two examples. In high school he was a lab assistant in the vocational electronics program where he taught electronics to younger students, assembled numerous instruments, and helped build the department’s first micro-computer. During his college internship at HP, Steve invented a valuable new development system that was used to develop their first voice synthesis products. He holds a BSEE from the University of California, Davis.