Management Team

Dr. Venkat Rayapati, Founder, President & CEO

Prior to SAI, Dr. Rayapati worked as Vice President of Design Engineering at Chartered Semiconductor, and served as Chief Technology Officer & Chief Operating Officer of Xalted Networks Inc. Rayapati also co-founded Portal Player Inc. (now part of NVidia) as their VP of Engineering & CTO. He has over twenty years of experience in telecom, semiconductor design, audio, H.264, video data compression and transmission. Before that he worked at Lucent Technologies as Director of Product Development, responsible for development of the broadband access products. He held several technical positions at Nortel Networks, National Semiconductor (Chief Architect) and AMD (Architecture Manager of K6). Dr. Rayapati was also on the Board of Directors at Digital Video Systems Inc. and has held various technical advisory board memberships at Zarlink Semiconductor and Cornice Corporation. Dr. Rayapati holds a Doctoral degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Montreal, Canada and also from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India. He has also taught several courses at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz in emerging Wireless technologies, optical technologies, VLSI design, RF IC design, LAN, WAN, IP & MPLS related advanced technologies. Dr. Rayapati has published approximately 35 papers in various reputable International Journals and Conferences.

Robert K. Young, President of SAI Government Systems  & Executive GM Worldwide Sales

Robert Young is currently serving as President of SAI Government Systems, where he leads the companies’ growth initiative in the Federal, State and Local Government markets. Prior to this position, Young served as the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Public Engines Inc. which provides advanced mapping technology and analytics tools to Federal, State and Local Governments, and also Law Enforcement offices across North America and Europe. Robert Young previously served as Executive Vice President of World Wide Sales and Marketing at HelloSoft Inc. HelloSoft is a global company located in Silicon Valley and is focused on the VoIP/IMS/WiFi business sector. Previously, Young was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the SAIC Global Telecommunications Group. Previous board assignments include Chairman of ANX Asia Pacific (SAIC/Mitsubishi Joint Venture), Board of Directors SAIC Ltd. Europe, Board of advisors for SBC Communications (now AT&T in San Antonio, Tx.), Wisor Telecom (Bethesda, Md.), Packet Video (San Diego, Ca.), Airespace, Clear Technologies (Denver, Co), and Touch Technologies Inc. (San Diego, Ca) and MobilSynch Inc. (Denver, Colorado). Previous Advisory board positions in include for iPass (Redwood Shores, Ca.), S5 Wireless (Draper, Utah), Atreus Systems (Ottowa, Ca.), HelloSoft Incorporated (San Jose, Ca.)

Dr. Reza Golshan, Vice President of Engineering

Dr. Reza Golshan is an expert on Digital Communication, Networking and Broadband Wireless products (LTE/WiMAX/WiFi/GPS). He held executive positions in various LTE and Broadband Communication companies such as Rapid Bridge (later acquired by Qualcomm). Prior to joining SAI, Dr. Golshan was the Chief Technology Officer at Telemetria Telephony where he brought in smart connectivity solutions into automobiles through LTE and WiMax. Prior to that, Dr. Golshan was the Chief Architect and Director of Engineering at Fujitsu Microelectronics, where he was responsible for system solutions and SOC development projects. He led development of innovative VLSI chip sets for broadband wireless systems compliant with fixed and mobile WiMax as well as Femto Base stations. Dr. Golshan also developed a highly integrated Voice over IP (VOIP) chip for IP phones and multi-channel Residential Gateway applications. He delivered a HD set top box solution based on a single chip design of High Level MPEG-2 decoder for HDTV. Formerly, Dr. Golshan was Principal Architect at National Semiconductor responsible for architecture and design of chip sets for ATM networks and digital infotainment applications. He has also been engaged in design of fiber optic systems for OC3/OC12 access multiplexers and ATM switches at Positron Fiber Systems.

Dr. Golshan received his Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Electronics from the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology (UMIST) in England.

Dr.Tarun Soni, Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Tarun Soni Prior to joining SAI he was an executive at Argon ST (Acquired by Boeing) responsible for Emerging technology strategy, market and customer development for emerging communication systems. Earlier he worked as a CTO for Tactical Systems Development Group of General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems responsible for all advanced Systems development and R&D. Dr. Soni has led development teams in a wide variety of high-technology organizations such as NASA and startups. He has designed and delivered a number of complex communication systems and solutions, which have been deployed in M2M, Defense Networking, Tier-1 Core infrastructure as well as Enterprise Wireless Device Management etc. His systems design experience includes development of mobile terminal devices, core infrastructure equipment as well as satellite constellation payloads etc.

He has developed system products based on MIMO, Beam forming , Adaptive antenna’s, Software Defined Radios, MANET solutions, SOA, Service layer management, Virtualization and video processing technologies. His hand-on experience spans chip design, communication protocol stacks and software development for embedded, real-time systems. His current research interests include emerging wireless technologies, adaptive signal processing systems implementations and applications.

Dr Tarun received doctorate degree in Computer Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles and B.S in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is an adjunct professor position at the Technological Leadership Institute in the University of Minnesota. His taught System Architectures and Real time Operating System courses in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Soni has 30 publications International Journals and conferences.

Weng Loong Leong, Vice President of Sales for APAC Region

Mr. WengLoong Leong has more than 20-plus years’ experience in Marketing, Sales and Business Development. He has worked with various multinational firms and built sales teams from ground zero. Mr. Leong is the Co-founder of Droid Infotech Pte Ltd and also foundedPerpetual Help Management Services Pte Ltd. Mr. Leong has served as Regional Sales Executive of Success Factors Inc., and lead Sales Director level positions for various Govt. Ministries, Transportation and Telco’s. He has exceptionally strong sales background in broadband wireless telecommunications, systems products and software applications. He has been advisor and Board Member of various privately held start-up companies in APAC. Mr. Leong had graduated B.S Degree in Information Technology from National University of Singapore.

Vijayasri Rayapati, Vice President HR & Operations

Vijiyasri has over 13 years of Human Resources management, technical recruitment, and organization development experience. She has worked with IBM, Mindfinders, Vertical Net and several other companies on a full time and part time basis. Vijiyasri has also run her own recruitment firm supporting clients like Lucent Technologies, AMD, Portal Player and several start-up companies in the Silicon Valley. Vijyayasri obtained a B.S Degree in Fine Arts, and also a Post Graduate Diploma specialized in Human Resources Management from the University of Santa Cruz, California.