Rocco Tam, Ph.D.
Rocco Tam received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2003, 2008, and 2009, respectively. From 2008 to 2010, he was the founding member of an early-stage millimeter-wave semiconductors company, Keyssa, Los Angeles, CA. In this position, Rocco was the principal inventor of the industry first ultra-short-distance millimeter-wave (60 GHz) contactless connector system, and this invention resulted total $100M+ VC funding (Bloomberg Business, 11/13/2014, “Keyssa Promises to Let You ‘Kiss’ Your Cords Goodbye). In 2024, he was elected as a NXP Fellow at NXP Semiconductors for his contribution in the design of Wireless Connectivity System on a Chip. Currently, he leads various RFIC research and development, such as the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, UWB, RFID and mm-wave CMOS SoC RF transceiver design. He is an IEEE Senior member and a member of technical program committee in IEEE RFIC symposium. He was the recipient of multiple awards, IEEE 2008 High Performance Computer Architecture Symposium, 2017 Marvell Semiconductors Innovation Challenge Award, IEEE 2023 RFIC symposium and 2025 Semiconductor Research Corporation Outstanding Industry Liaison Award.
Expertise Area: Board and Deep Knowledge in Semiconductor/Hardware Design from Analog/RFIC Design in Connectivity all the way to EDA tools, CPU Design and Silicon Photonics
Industry Experience:
• NXP Fellow (One of the Highest Technical Position out of 30,000 NXP employee), NXP Semiconductors, San Jose, CA (April 2024 to Present)
• Technical Director, NXP Semiconductors San Jose, CA (Dec 2019 to April 2024)
• RFIC Design Engineer, Marvell Semiconductors, San Jose, CA (Aug 2011 to Dec 2019)
• RFIC Design Engineer, TagArray (Now Analog Device), Inc. Palo Alto, CA (June 2010- Aug 2011)
• Principal RFIC Design Engineer (Member of founding Team), Keyssa (Now Molex), Los Angeles, CA (Oct 2008 – May 2010)
• CPU Design Summer Intern, Intel Corporation, Summer 2005/2006/2007
60+ Publications and Patents in Semiconductors Hardware Design
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Fc1nNc0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Active Research Collaboration with several major Universities in US, Europe and Asia UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, USC, Washington State Univ, UT Dallas, NC State Univ, UNIMORE (Italy), TU Delft (Netherlands) and National Singapore University