Telecommunica 2011 to Feature Alumni Panel, Company Presentations

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Paul Gaske

The Master’s in Telecommunications Program at the University of Maryland will hold its fourth annual Telecommunica Symposium. The event will be held on the University of Maryland's College Park campus on Thursday, April 21, 2011 from 10:30 AM - 3:30 PM in the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center.

The morning will begin with an alumni panel, followed by a luncheon and awards ceremony to recognize outstanding student service and instructor teaching in the Telecom Program. Academic scholarship winners will also be recognized.

The luncheon will conclude with a keynote address on "Broadband Satellite" by Paul Gaske, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the North American Division at Hughes Network Systems.  Mr. Gaske joined Hughes in 1977 as a digital design engineer, and has held a variety of engineering, marketing, and business management positions throughout his career. He has worked extensively on digital communication networks, serving enterprises and consumers throughout the world. Mr. Gaske holds a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland and a Master's Degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) and is a published author on satellite networking technologies and markets. He is also the holder of numerous patents in satellite communications and broadband networking. Mr. Gaske is also a member of the Clark School Board of Visitors and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Board at the University of Maryland.

The afternoon will feature a series of company info sessions.

The Telecommunica agenda is as follows:

• Alumni Panel – 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
• Lunch and Awards – 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
• Keynote Speaker – 1:00 PM – 1:20 PM
• Company Presentations – 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM

Alumni panelists attending include:

Sachin Rajgire – Senior Partner
WestWide Inc.
Mr. Rajgire has 10+ year experience and is a Certified Sr. Cisco Network Engineer/Architect Expert in complex network design, maintenance and troubleshooting including VoIP, ASA, Video, and Nexus. Mr. Rajgire held engineering positions with Telos and the FDIC, and served as a senior instructor at Infospan for two years prior to starting WestWide Inc., a training and consulting firm based in McLean Virginia. 

Rasika Janartha – Senior Technical Consultant
Nokia Siemens Networks
Ms. Janartha has worked for a number of years in the telecom industry and has contributed to network roll-outs of different GSM/CDMA vendors, with different cellular technologies. She has worked in Nokia Siemens Networks and served in several positions and responsibilities, from R&D to Sales, and Network Implementation. A firm believer in “fluidity” of the telecom market, Rasika believes that business transformation is necessary to respond to changing customer requirements and market dynamics. She is recognized as a cross-functional team player with a balance of technical vision with implementation know-how. A proud alumnus of the University of Maryland at College Park, where she earned her Master’s in Telecommunications, she currently makes her home in Dallas, Texas and travels extensively to meet the needs of her clients in every corner of the globe.

Akash Gupta – Senior Product Manager
MicroStrategy
Mr. Gupta is a Product Manager at MicroStrategy and is responsible for end-to-end product life cycle and positioning of various products under MicroStrategy's Business Intelligence Platform. Prior to joining Product Management, he worked with eBay Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. as a Business Intelligence Lead. Prior to this, he worked with numerous customers in multiple vertical industries as a Software Consultant with MicroStrategy Technology. Mr. Gupta holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Amrawati University, India and an MS in Telecommunications from University of Maryland. He is currently attending Stanford University's professional education program.

Kaushal Bheda – Senior Program & Operations Manager
Hughes Network Systems
Mr. Bheda graduated from the University of Maryland's M.S Program in Telecommunications in 2001 and upon graduation took a position with Hughes Network Systems. He is currently working in the business group within the Mobilsat division at Hughes with customers that include Thuraya, Globalstar, Terrestar, ICO, Iridium and SCT. Kaushal's program management responsibilities include project management of existing projects responding to RFPs; writing contracts, SOWs, compliance matrices, technical proposals, management proposals and pricing proposals for small (>$1M) to large (<$100M) sized contracts. Operations management responsibilities include traveling to the customer gateways in Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Chile, Ethiopia, Nigeria, UAE, Canada, USA & India for operations management, installations, testing and handovers.

Companies attending include:

Hughes Network Systems
Verizon
Cisco Systems
T-Mobile
AT&T
CommScope

For more information about the Master's in Telecommunications Program, visit www.telecom.umd.edu.

Published April 19, 2011