The Nai Fellow Profile: an Interview with Dr. Henry Samueli

Technology and Innovation, Vol. 20, pp. 343-349, 2019 ISSN 1949-8241 • E-ISSN 1949-825X Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.21300/20.1-2.2018.343 Copyright © 2019 National Academy of Inventors. www.technologyandinnovation.org

THE NAI FELLOW PROFILE: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. HENRY SAMUELI

Henry Samueli1 and Kimberly A. Macuare2

1Broadcom, San Jose, CA, USA 2National Academy of Inventors, Tampa, FL, USA

In a recent interview with T&I, renowned inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Dr. Henry Samueli discusses the origins of Broadcom, why he invests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education for young people, and the importance of taking advantage of opportunities.

This issue’s NAI Fellow Profile features Dr. Henry Samueli — renowned inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. After starting his career in industry at defense contractor TRW, Inc., Samueli accepted a position as a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he developed the technology that would lead him to found technology giant Broadcom. In addition to faculty positions at UCLA and University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine), he currently serves as chairman of the board of Broadcom Inc. and chairman of the Broadcom Foundation. Samueli received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from UCLA in electrical engineering. He is the author of over 100 technical papers and inventor on 75 U.S. patents. His groundbreaking inventions and scholarship have led to a multitude of professional recognitions, including fellowship in the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers as well as membership in the National Academy of Engineering. (Photo courtesy of Henry Samueli)

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Accepted: November 1, 2018. Profiled Inventor: Profiled Inventor: Henry Samueli, Ph.D., Broadcom Inc., 15101 Alton Parkway, Irvine, CA 9261, USA. Corresponding Author: Kimberly A. Macuare, Ph.D., Associate Editor, Technology and Innovation, Journal of the National Academy of Inventors® at the USF Research Park, 3702 Spectrum Boulevard, Suite 165, Tampa, FL 33612, USA. Tel: +1 (813) 753-6522. E-mail: [email protected]

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Samueli has worked in industry and academia, in which our products were so critical to our success. led major philanthropic efforts, and even recently So if I had to pick, I’d say that the patents related to entered the ranks of professional sports team own- our cable modem inventions were the most impact- ers. Through all of these efforts, he has navigated his ful and relevant in the early days of the company course with passion, following his interests — both and, therefore, I have a really soft spot in my heart intellectual and personal — and achieving tremen- for them. dous success. On the professional side, Samueli is a pioneer in the field of digital communications. T&I: That comment about heart speaks to your In the 1980s, when slow internet connections via passion for your work. You have said that you got telephone modems were the norm, Samueli envi- interested in engineering not because it was a great sioned a better solution and, based on his prior way to earn income but because you loved it so much. experiences at TRW, started a research program at Now that you’re working on the administrative side UCLA in broadband communications. The results of things, do you miss the science side? of this work led to his creation of broadband chips, Samueli: It’s interesting because you go through which revolutionized the way we communicated, and phases in life, and I very much obviously enjoyed came to be used in cable modems, set-top boxes, and the science side, the research side, the product devel- other networking equipment. Based on this technol- opment side, and the detailed design that I did in the ogy, he spun a start-up out of UCLA in 1991 with early part of my career as an engineer because it’s so his former Ph.D. student Henry Nicholas, and this exciting. I also enjoy the management and adminis- venture would turn out to be a tech success story, as tration side because you get a much broader overview Broadcom Corporation dominated the broadband of the industry, the business, and the technology chip market and in its new iteration as Broadcom from a business perspective that you don’t quite get Inc. is #11 on Forbes top digital companies list. On when you’re down in the lab designing chips and the personal side, Samueli took immediate advantage working on products. They’re complementary but of the financial success of Broadcom’s public offering different experiences, and I enjoy them both. I think to start the Samueli Foundation, where he supports a it’s a natural progression as you move through your wide range of philanthropic activities, most notably career that you move up and become more involved science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in management and administration and, therefore, (STEM) education efforts. In addition, he has made you get a broader overview of your industry. major gifts to UCLA and UC Irvine to support their engineering and medical programs, respectively. T&I: Do you think that because you had the oppor- In a recent interview with T&I, inventor, entrepre- tunity to move into the administrative side of things, neur, and philanthropist Dr. Henry Samueli discusses you developed a new set of skills, or do you think that the origins of Broadcom, why he invests in STEM the skills that you already had as a researcher and education for young people, and the importance of inventor were applicable in that new arena? taking advantage of opportunities. Samueli: No, it is definitely a new set of skills. Being a manager and administrator, building a business, INTERVIEW and understanding the markets, the sales process, T&I: You have 75 patents, and that really represents and the marketing process are a new set of skills that an amazing output of inventive activity. Do you have you typically don’t have when you are doing detailed any favorites? Were there some you think are more design engineering and research. I developed those important because either they’re personal to you in skills through osmosis by working alongside my col- some way or because of the impact they had? leagues who had a lot of the expertise in those areas, and I asked a lot of questions and slowly learned and Samueli: I think you can definitely pick some favor- gained a broader skill set, but it was not something ites, especially in terms of impact. It turns out, of I innately had. course, that the earlier patents were more impactful because that was in the earlier stages of the company THE NAI PROFILE 345

T&I: In reading about your early years, I loved your and now it’s virtually 100% CMOS for building radios quote about people who were very skeptical of your as opposed to using all those esoteric and expensive efforts. You said, “People in the industry said, ‘You technologies that have gone by the wayside. So, it’s guys are crazy, this will never work.’ We were trying quite interesting how we were right and vindicated, to build these high performance radios and commu- but it took over 10 years for that to happen. nication circuits out of very average technologies. T&I: That anecdote also speaks to the idea of But we saw that it could be done.” What made you vision — that you see something where other people so sure, despite the pushback that you were getting, don’t see it. Do you think that that vision is some- that you were right? thing that you had innately, or is it something that Samueli: Well, it goes back to my days as a faculty developed over time and experience? member at UCLA. I formed a research team made Samueli: It’s kind of a combination of things. It helps up of me and three other faculty members working to have the experience, and, in fact, in my case, the in the area of designing chips for radio communica- experience of working in industry at TRW, a defense tions using very low-cost semiconductor technology contractor for military broadband communication known as CMOS. CMOS stands for complementary systems, was invaluable. I did five years of work there metal-oxide-semiconductor. It’s the technology that’s after my Ph.D. The experience I gained there was used to build virtually all chips today. Back then, it critical for my research when I went back to become a was not used to build the radio frequency portion faculty member at UCLA. After those five years, I had of the system. CMOS was used to build the digital a much broader perspective and much better idea of circuits, the microprocessors, and so forth. It was a what’s practical, what’s not practical, what’s feasible, very low cost but lower performance technology and and what’s not feasible. Therefore, it is a combination typically wasn’t suitable for radio frequencies, so the of intuition and experience that gives you the insight industry was using much more expensive, esoteric into doing a lot of these projects. technologies to manufacture radios in those days. We came up with innovative ways of building T&I: From your perspective of having been in the radios using this very cheap CMOS technology and trenches with invention and now leading the efforts went out in the industry to try to get funding for our administratively with Broadcom, are there any qual- research projects at UCLA, and most companies did ities that you would add to being a great innovator laugh at us as you mentioned in the quote because besides vision and tenacity in the face of naysayers? they said, “Nah, that can’t be done.” I replied, “Well, Samueli: I think those are probably the most import- we did the research, and we did build some prototype ant. You also have to have the inherent skill and designs and found that they were reasonably good.” knowledge because it’s hard to innovate in an area They weren’t better than the state of the art of what where you don’t know anything about the field, so you could do with the expensive technologies, but, being an expert is the baseline requirement. On top we saw, as time marched on, that we could prob- of that, you need to have that tenacity, drive, and ably catch up and make the CMOS chips as good willingness to fail. You have to take risks when you’re if not better than the more esoteric technologies. doing research in new areas and be willing to think We pushed forward in spite of what was said. The outside of the box. You have to be willing to have fail- government ultimately did fund us. We didn’t get ures but be persistent enough that you keep moving funding from companies to do it, but we ultimately forward even if you do have failures. got funding from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. We ultimately proved our T&I: You’ve achieved pretty much the greatest pos- point, and, indeed, we were getting performance that sible success in terms of academic invention, as you was comparable to the state of the art even though were able to translate your research efforts into a ours was built using very inexpensive CMOS technol- profitable venture that has literally changed lives. ogy. Today, virtually all radios are built with CMOS That is especially impressive because you mentioned technology. The industry has completely transformed, earlier that the business skills that you had to develop 346 THE NAI PROFILE

student, was also working at TRW at the time, and he left TRW to join this company. At PairGain, we got exposure to what it is to be a start-up. That was the on the job training that we needed so that when the opportunity presented itself to create Broadcom a few years later, we at least had some basic knowledge because there was no technology transfer office at UCLA, and there were very few venture capitalists here in southern California. It was difficult to find folks who wanted to invest in companies and teach you how to do it. We did it by the seat of our pants, but we had that one experience at PairGain that helped us tremendously in knowing what to do to and how to move forward. T&I: I read that you took a pay cut to go from industry to academia. And then, you could have tranquilly stayed in academia, done your research, and worked with students instead of risking it all to go back into industry. What helped you navigate that potentially treacherous path?

(Photo courtesy of Henry Samueli) Samueli: Well, it certainly wasn’t a grand plan. It’s not like I set out and said I’m going to do X, Y, Z over the next 10 years and had this grand plan. It was coming out of academia weren’t necessarily native to really just being opportunistic and taking advantage you. Also, I’m imagining that in the late eighties and of opportunities as they presented themselves. With early nineties, there weren’t the kind of support efforts each one of the jobs I had, I was perfectly content that we have today, such as technology transfer offices to keep it for the rest of my life. When I got my first and university incubators that help entrepreneurial job after I earned my Ph.D. at UCLA in 1980, I went faculty today. What was that road like? to work for TRW for five years. I loved it. It was Samueli: The whole start-up culture that we now have a phenomenal experience, and I would have been virtually everywhere, back then was only in Silicon happy working as an engineer there forever. But, the Valley and certainly not in southern California. We opportunity presented itself down the road when had lots of large corporations, like defense contrac- UCLA made me an offer to be a faculty member, and tors, and most graduates from UCLA Engineering I said, “Well, that’s kind of too good to turn down.” or other local schools went to work for these large Being a professor at UCLA was a dream job. I companies. The start-up mentality just wasn’t there. decided to take advantage of that opportunity even We were on our own, but we had the good fortune of though it involved a pay cut. It was, again, something actually getting involved with some former colleagues I loved and was an experience of a lifetime. I would from TRW who did go out and start a company called have been happy doing that for the rest of my life, PairGain Technologies. It was founded by two col- but, again, Henry Nicholas and I started this research leagues that I worked with at TRW, and I was asked to program, which we did based on our experiences at be a co-founder of the company, and I knew nothing TRW. We started doing research on taking these very about what that even meant. When they talked about sophisticated, complex, expensive military broad- stock options, I said, “What’s that?” I was very naive, band communication systems and trying to figure but I agreed to do it, and I stayed at UCLA as a fac- out how to make them cheaper so that they could be ulty member and agreed to consult one day a week implemented for commercial applications. That was with this company. Henry Nicholas, my first Ph.D. the basis of the research program. As we progressed THE NAI PROFILE 347 through the research program, we started getting lots At that point, I made it my mission in life to figure of interesting results and improving our ideas. The out how that thing worked. I knew I had to become opportunity that presented itself to start Broadcom an electrical engineer to understand it, and that’s was created from engineers working in industry and what I pursued. calling us after reading our published papers and When I applied to college, I knew I wanted to saying, “This is great technology. Have you thought major in electrical engineering because I had to fig- about starting a company so we can use it in our ure out how that radio worked. It was this hands-on products?” experience in middle school that really drove me to These chips were pure research prototypes for us, be an engineer. That’s why, through our foundation but companies loved the ideas and wanted to use today, one of the things we are promoting very heavily them. Companies out there were asking us to start is hands-on learning, because we think it’s such an a company so that we could create the technology important part of motivating young kids to pursue that they could use in their products. We were almost STEM careers. Getting them building things, working pulled out of the university. But, again, it was an in a lab, and testing things out is very motivating, and opportunity that presented itself that we both thought it was driven from my own personal experience there we shouldn’t let go. We decided to found Broadcom, as well. and the rest is history. When you see an opportunity, T&I: Would you speak in a little bit more detail about go for it and grab it even though it’s high risk and what your foundation is doing as regards supporting may fail. You might be extraordinarily successful. youth in STEM? T&I: When speaking with inventors, it’s often inter- Samueli: The two largest efforts within the Samueli esting when they talk about their childhoods and Foundation are STEM education and health, partic- some of the experiences that they had when they were ularly integrative health, which incorporates wellness younger that affected their future career paths. Were and holistic medicine, a passion of my wife, Susan. there any early influences that you had that steered My wife earned her bachelor’s in mathematics at you towards a career in the STEM area? UC Berkeley and worked for IBM as a programmer Samueli: There was a very clear event that steered me and systems engineer for many years, so she has a to become an electrical engineer. It happened when STEM background as well. Between the two of us, I was in the seventh grade when I took an electric we’re very passionate about STEM education and shop class. I had seen some catalogs in the junk mail promoting STEM education for young kids to get that included a catalog from Heathkit, which I don’t them excited about the field. From my perspective, think is around anymore, but it was like RadioShack. if you look at most areas of endeavor these days, it’s They had kits that you could assemble for various hard to find a field that doesn’t incorporate some sort electronic devices, and one of the kits I saw in there of technology, whether it’s software or hardware, but was a radio, a shortwave AM/FM radio. I approached it’s everywhere. Therefore, the more technology liter- the teacher in the electric shop class, and I asked him ate you are, the more likely you will be successful in if I could do this as a class project on the side. I would your career, and that’s why we very strongly promote build it at home, in the evenings, and then bring it in STEM education, project based learning, etc. in our at the end of the semester for a class project. Initially, foundation activities. he said no because he thought it was too difficult and T&I: You are known for having great dedication to I could never succeed. I kept pestering him, and, you philanthropic efforts. Those efforts extend not finally, he agreed, and I did that as a side project on only to youth in STEM but also to the university level my own. Over the course of the semester, I followed at UCLA and UC Irvine. Why did you choose to all the instructions in the kit, soldered all the wires support UCLA and UC Irvine in these ways? Is this together, and put the five vacuum tubes in it. At the part of completing the STEM pipeline for students? end of the semester, I plugged it in and sound came out. I was so shocked by the fact that sound came out Samueli: It is an entire pipeline. You start young, of this thing that I had been assembling for months. whether it’s in grammar school or middle school, 348 THE NAI PROFILE but you need to motivate kids to pursue STEM. It’s opportunity, so we took advantage of it. In retro- also important to maintain that pipeline all the way spect, it was a fantastic decision on our part because through their educational career and college degrees. it’s so much fun and it has so much impact on the You want to maintain excellence at the college level community. STEM education is a much narrower because those are the ones who are going to go out and field, but everybody gets sports, and it’s a huge part start companies and create new technologies through of any community when you collectively look at all the research that’s done at the university. I feel that is sports, from youth to professional. It’s been wonder- very important, especially because I pursued a Ph.D., ful for our family. Everybody gets excited, our kids, became a faculty member, and did research at the granddaughter, relatives, friends, etc., and it’s really a university, so I personally experienced the benefit fun way to get involved in the community and make of that. It was natural for me to want to give back to an impact on the community. It wasn’t a direct tie-in help promote that level of excellence in research at with our STEM backgrounds, but it’s certainly an interesting tie-in with our philanthropic giving. the university level as well. Our first major gifts from our foundation were to the engineering schools at T&I: On the personal side, you are the son of immi- UCLA and UC Irvine — UCLA obviously because it grants, and research clearly shows that immigration was my alma mater and UC Irvine because that’s the and immigrants are a huge driver of innovation in the major university in Orange County, where I live and U.S. From your perspective, why do you think that where Broadcom was headquartered for many years. might be? What are your thoughts on immigration Susan and I believe in supporting all levels of STEM as a driver for innovation? education, from K through 12, through university, Samueli: I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think you’d and even through advanced graduate research. often find that immigrants are fleeing from some sort T&I: I think a lot of people would look at your story, of persecution; it’s why they’re emigrating out of their and they might see your ownership of the Anaheim home country to go elsewhere, whether it’s due to Ducks as being out of place. At T&I, we’ve learned war, poverty, or something else. In fact, that was the that the thing that seems out of place usually isn’t. It case for my parents. They lived in Poland and were usually has some really interesting connection to the Jewish, and they endured the horrors of the Holocaust whole picture. Is your ownership of this sports fran- and the Second World War. Most of their family was chise out of place, or is it really connected somehow killed. My parents were among the few members of more deeply to your other pursuits? their families who survived the Holocaust, and they were fortunate enough to be able to emigrate to the Samueli: In terms of my professional career, it is out of place. I didn’t have a professional career in sports, U.S. They came here to a country that is open and wel- but I view the Ducks also as a community asset. Given coming and promotes freedom and tolerance. That’s that we do so much philanthropy to build a better the greatest thing in the world. They were extremely way of life in our community and enhance people’s grateful for the opportunity that they were given here lives, having a great sports team that’s also committed in the U.S. due to the freedom we have, and they to the community is a valuable asset in that sense, instilled those values in their kids and they pushed which ties very much into our philanthropy. The us, especially with regard to education. My parents purchase of the Ducks was not part of any major pushed me very hard to do well in school and to do strategy or lifelong vision that I had. Opportunities my homework. They said, “Take advantage of what kind of fall in your lap, and then it’s up to you to take you have here in this country; go get an education, get advantage of them. a good job.” So, I think, on average, you find that the This was an opportunity that presented itself children of first generation immigrants are successful when Disney decided to get out of the sports own- because they’ve been given those values of working ership business, so they put the Ducks up for sale hard and taking advantage of the opportunities that and approached us. It seemed like an interesting are presented to you. THE NAI PROFILE 349

CONCLUSION of the company, we have played a major role in pro- As we were wrapping up the interview, when asked viding broadband internet access to everyone.” In about Broadcom’s famous slogan, “Connecting every- essence, his dream to connect everything came true thing,” Samueli mused on the origins of the phrase. As through Broadcom, and, at least from the outside, he notes, when they came up with a corporate slogan, it seems like this scenario is now being played out it was really about the Broadcom chips, as they had again through his philanthropic efforts. By creating designed the chips to connect people to the internet a complete pipeline of STEM education for young and “enable ubiquitous connectivity, wherever you people and college students, reaching people through are, whenever you want it, to all the information on both education and sports, and working to support the internet.” And, while it started as their vision and the whole person through health, spirituality, and a pithy tagline, he says, “It has truly come to pass, cultural efforts, Samueli may once again achieve his which is quite amazing, that over the 25 year history dream of connecting everything.