Rappaport joins Motorola for 2006

Professor Ted Rappaport, WNCG's founder and first director, is on leave from The University of Texas during 2006 to spend a sabbatical at Motorola, Inc. Rappaport will be helping to integrate Wireless Valley Communications, Inc., a company that he and his wife founded in 1995, which Motorola acquired in late 2005.

 The company's core engineering team, mostly Virginia Tech graduates, moved from Blacksburg to Austin months before Rappaport joined the UT faculty in 2002, and the business experienced rapid growth under the leadership of Jim Welch, the former CEO of Metrowerks and a past WNCG Industrial Affiliate board member.

 Motorola plans to keep the entire staff in Austin, where it has created a new RF Design and Management Software Solutions business unit.