9/28/2010 Shawn Adderly, ECE ILLINOIS
Written by Shawn Adderly, ECE ILLINOIS
ECE alumnus Robert Geiger (MSEE ’89) is vice president of engineering at Translattice a start-up company based in Santa Clara, California. Geiger is also a co-founder of the company, which is developing new management tools and technologies to improve cloud computing.
Translattice is designing solutions for some widespread problems that distributed systems currently have, such as a lack of standard transactional databases, long term resiliency, data control, and policy enforcement. Geiger said his company is taking a much bolder approach by building these solutions from the ground up instead of relying on old technology.
“What we’re doing is starting with a clean canvas so we can capitalize on the benefits of the latest technology and avoid the flaws of older applications,” Geiger said.
The company is now beginning to engage with customers, after developing solutions for the past three years, which Geiger described as having a “solid engineering foundation behind them.”
“We are very excited for this new phase of the business,” he said.
Geiger has had an active engineering career. Prior to founding Translattice he was vice president of engineering at Mu Dynamics. He has also held positions at Symantec, Recourse Technologies, and Motorola.
While Geiger was working at Motorola, the focus of his work changed from electromagnetics to software as the Internet was coming of age.
Geiger came to Illinois for his master’s degree after receiving his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the State University of New York. He said one of the reasons he decided to come to Illinois was its respected name.
“The head of our department recommended it to me as one of the best schools to go to for electromagnetics,” Geiger said.
Geiger credited Illinois for “creating an environment for students to be innovative.”
He offered some advice to students that wanted to start their own company.
“It is a very intense thing to do—to found a company. You have to be very focused and be very assertive, and you need to get experience around people that do this kind of thing,” he said.
This is why Geiger said he encourages students to work for a start-up company.
However, he said the research division of a company would also be a good place to start a career.
“At Motorola I think I learned a lot of great things,” Geiger said. “I went to Recourse because it was an opportunity to move up and get responsibility.”
Translattice plans to roll out their solutions to customers in the fourth quarter of this year.