How I became a techie: Roberto Padovani

Apr 4, 2016 1:00 PM ET
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My interest in technology started in high school as a love for mathematics. Its elegance and the fact that it came quite easy to me helped the “love story.” - Roberto Padovani

I decided to study engineering, and that was very interesting to me at an undergraduate level. Then I moved from Italy to the U.S. for graduate school, and I liked it even better, continuing in engineering and computer science.

After I got my PhD, I was lucky enough to interview for a job in San Diego with two of the most famous researchers and contributors to communication—Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi. I started working for their company Linkabit in 1984. The rest is history, because once they left that company and started Qualcomm, they asked me to join. I came to Qualcomm at the very early stages. Good people, interesting projects—I just loved it. And it’s been an adventure since.

Dr. Roberto Padovani is an executive vice president and fellow of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. He holds over 100 patents and is the recipient of the 2016 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He is also an adjunct professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at University of California, San Diego.