“During his senior year at WVU, Yassini became fascinated by the burgeoning satellite communications industry. Upon graduation, he was recruited by GE, where he went to work building television receivers.”

Dr. Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard is founder and CEO of YAS Capital Partners LLC. He has gained an international reputation as a broadband visionary for inventing the cable modem while founder and CEO of LANcity and for establishing the cable modem industry standards (DOCSIS) through Cable Television Laboratories, SCTE and ITU.

Dr. Yassini is well known in industry circles as the “father of the cable modem” for inventing this technology and was twice named a CED Broadband 50 designate. CED Magazine named him “1998 Man of the Year” for creating and fostering the multibillion‐dollar cable modem broadband industry.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Yassini attended the University of Phalvei for one year before he immigrated to the United States in 1977, settling in Morgantown, near his uncle and brother. He continued his education at WVU, pursuing an interest in science and electronics.

During his senior year at WVU, Yassini became fascinated by the burgeoning satellite communications industry. Upon graduation, he was recruited by GE, where he went to work building television receivers. Ever curious, Yassini would take TVs home to study signal flow and design and within two years he was designing new circuitry and filters and working with digital signal processing. In 1984 he had his first brush with the cable TV industry, working with GE’s Comband division developing some of their new technology.

Dr. Yassini is the author of Planet Broadband a humanized look at broadband technology. The NCTA awarded Dr. Yassini with a 2004 Vanguard Award, one of the Cable Industry’s highest honors, in recognition of his contributions and dedication to the industry. The Cable Television Pioneers also inducted Dr. Yassini into Class of 2012 for his tremendous significant and meaningful contributions to the cable industry.

As founder of YAS, he has served as a board member on a number of privately and publicly held companies. He has served as a senior executive consultant with CableLabs, Comcast, Cablevision, and as a member of in charge of the next generation standard set‐top box “RNG”, with CableLabs in charge of the DOCSIS and CableHome projects and as the cable industry’s point man on standardizing the cable modem’s global footprint. He has also served in the board of LANcity (acquired by Bay Networks in 1996); BAS (acquired by ADC in 2000), TrueChat (acquired by Terayon in 2001), and Entropic from 2001 to 2008 (IPO 2007).

Dr. Yassini has been involved in managing and advising companies ranging from $100 million to $50 billion and has been a member of the LGI advisory Technology board. In the spring of 2008, Dr. Yassini opened the Yassini Broadband Knowledge Center in Boston (Broadband Center for Excellence), offering research grants and facilities to investigate fresh ideas in broadband technology that will improve the way we work and live.

Dr. Yassini holds an honorary Doctor of Science and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from West Virginia University, an Honorary Ph.D. from Merrimack College, as well as an equivalent MBA from General Electric’s Financial Management Program.

Dr. Yassini is a worldwide speaker and author on topics of digital services using the broadband infrastructure. He resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

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