A Great Environment, and a Great Team for Keysight

By Jay Alexander, CTO at Keysight Technologies

Keysight has long been engaged with leading colleges and universities around the world. We value staying connected to the latest research, supporting researchers and students with electronic measurement solutions, and providing employment opportunities for the next generation of innovators. We offer a broad array of education solutions that includes courseware for teaching labs, and earlier this week we announced a new remote access lab solution for online learning. The software for this solution is cloud-based and it integrates with popular lab management systems such as Moodle, Blackboard, and Canvas. Ongoing pandemic or not, hybrid learning using this type of technology is here to stay.

One of the schools we're proud to partner with is Georgia Tech. Among other distinctions, they're one of the world's top producers of electrical engineering and computer science talent. And as you would expect for such an institution, they are developing and promoting some impressive leaders within their own organization. Early this year Dr. Raheem Beyah was named Dean of the School of Engineering, and in August he was featured in a great article and video that you can see here. Raheem is pictured at left above, alongside Georgia Tech's President, Dr. Ángel Cabrera. That image and the video were taken in the school's Interdisciplinary Design Commons (IDC), a three‑story, state‑of‑the‑art makerspace that was created inside an old auditorium. I had a chance to tour the building several years ago when it was being kitted out, and it's wonderful to see how the new space has come to fruition, complete with all the great equipment from Keysight.

Thanks to Todd Cutler for sending the piece featuring Dr. Bayeh my way. Raheem covers quite a bit of ground for such a short interview, including how he came to pursue engineering, the importance of diverse role models, and how he thinks about what has to come next for Georgia Tech and the profession. I like how he describes his role as "the best job on campus", as well as this statement he makes about why engineering is cool:

“I tell my son an engineer looks at where we are, takes that as input, and then dreams. Engineers use math and science to actually build the things we dream about.”

Raheem's predecessor in the role of Dean was Steve McLaughlin, my undergraduate classmate from Northwestern, who is now the university's Provost (way to go Steve!), and Steve followed Gary May, who is now Chancellor at UC-Davis. What a great stream of leadership talent, and I'll note that all three of them came out of the ECE department.

In addition to supporting labs like the IDC with equipment and software, Keysight has had numerous collaborations with Georgia Tech researchers, and our PathWave Design software is used in some of the electronic design classes. The strength of Georgia Tech's research and teaching programs is one of the reasons we decided to locate our software design center in midtown Atlanta, embedded into the university's physical and cultural environment. We have a great team there, and they're an important part of the overall innovation equation for Keysight as well as a force for good within the university community and beyond. I miss being able to visit in person and I very much appreciate the resilience they've demonstrated throughout the pandemic.

My thanks to Keysight's Atlanta team members including our Site GM Deepty Chauhan for all you do, and to all our supporters such as Dean Bayeh as well. We'll keep the innovations –– in the way teaching and learning are accomplished, in our software development practices, and in our products and solutions –– going strong through the balance of this year and beyond.