Dr. Hamid Ahmadi Joins Motorola as Company's First Chief Architect

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Feb. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola, Inc. today appointed Dr. Hamid Ahmadi as the company's first Chief Architect. As corporate vice president, Technology, Ahmadi will develop a unified architectural framework to support Motorola's Seamless Mobility vision and lead strategic hardware and software architecture planning across all Motorola businesses and R&D. Ahmadi reports to Padmasree Warrior, executive vice president and chief technology officer.

Dr. Ahmadi has over 25 years of research, development and management experience in the area of telecommunication, IP networking, wireless communications and network security. An IEEE Fellow, he served on the board of directors of Packeteer(R), Inc. and on the advisory board of Airespace, Inc., now part of Cisco Systems. Dr. Ahmadi is also on the Industry Advisory Board of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park and University of California, Santa Barbara, and was an executive board member of the International Computer Science Institute at University of California, Berkeley.

"Hamid's deep expertise in systems and software architecture platforms across IT and telecommunications industries will be a tremendous advantage to Motorola," said Warrior. "Given his proven track record, we are confident he will inspire and strategically unify the multiple software and hardware development groups across Motorola globally."

"I believe Motorola is uniquely positioned to lead the industry in realizing the vision of Seamless Mobility and I want to be part of that revolution. Motorola's leadership in the confluence of emerging multi-media, wireless and Internet services will no doubt shape the future of communications worldwide," said Dr. Ahmadi. "As such, a common architectural vision and strategy will positively impact Motorola as the company continues to shape and innovate landmark communication technologies of the future."

Dr. Ahmadi most recently served as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Global Communications Sector at IBM. As lead technologist and CTO for the sector, he was responsible for formulating technical strategies by identifying new growth opportunities to enable customers to transform their IT and networking infrastructures using an IBM integrated solutions based approach. His previous contributions to the company were numerous, including a tenure as Director of Security and Networking Research at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where he was responsible for the research and development efforts that led to two IBM Wireless LAN products. He also co-invented IBM's Prizma Switch technology that garnered him an Outstanding Innovation Award from IBM.

Prior to his position with IBM, Dr. Ahmadi held various leadership roles at AT&T Labs, including Vice President of the Global Network and IP Services Planning and Development organizations and Vice President and Chief Technology Architect for Internet and Networking Systems. He was also responsible for the creation of the highly visible AT&T Center for Internet Research (ACIRI) in joint collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley in February 1999 as well as a new networking research and development group in AT&T Labs, Menlo Park, CA.

Dr. Ahmadi served as founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Personal Communications Magazine, guest editor for the IEEE JSAC and was technical editor for the IEEE transaction on communications. He is also adjunct faculty at Polytechnic University of New York. Dr. Ahmadi received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University, NY, in 1976, 1978, and 1983, respectively.

About Motorola

Motorola is known around the world for innovation and leadership in wireless and broadband communications. Inspired by our vision of Seamless Mobility, the people of Motorola are committed to helping you get and stay connected simply and seamlessly to the people, information, and entertainment that you want and need. We do this by designing and delivering "must have" products, "must do" experiences and powerful networks -- along with a full complement of support services. A Fortune 100 company with global presence and impact, Motorola had sales of US $36.8 billion in 2005. For more information about our company, our people and our innovations, please visit http://www.motorola.com/ .

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