Raghupathy Sivakumar has been named as the Wayne J. Holman Chair Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), effective August 1, 2014. The Holman Chair was established by Wayne J. Holman, III, in memory of his grandfather, Wayne J. Holman, Sr., EE 1901, and his father, Wayne J. Holman, Jr., EE 1928, to honor their lifetime accomplishments and their legacies at Georgia Tech. 

Sivakumar joined the ECE faculty in 2000, where he leads the Georgia Tech Networks and Mobile Computing Research Group. He and his current team of graduate students develop algorithms and protocols for wireless networks and mobile computing. Sivakumar has graduated 20 Ph.D. and M.S. students, and has published over 125 refereed journal and conference papers and book chapters with his students and faculty colleagues. He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, the ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review, the Elsevier Computer Networks Journal, and the ACM/Baltzer Wireless Networks Journal. In addition, he has chaired several ACM and IEEE conferences.

While at Georgia Tech, Sivakumar has been active in entrepreneurial activities. He is the co-founder and CTO at StarMobile, Inc., a venture-backed enterprise mobility technology start-up that mobilizes enterprise applications at a fraction of the cost and time of other approaches in the market. He also was the founder and CTO of Asankya, Inc., a venture-backed enterprise application optimization start-up that was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2011.

Sivakumar is the founder of the Center for Engineering and Technology Entrepreneurship (CREATE), a student-focused entrepreneurship initiative that is open to all Georgia Tech students. He also led the development of two successful entrepreneurial educational initiatives – Startup Lab, a course on startup basics, and Startup Summer, a faculty-led, student-focused intensive program for student teams to launch startups based on their ideas, inventions, and prototypes.

Sivakumar also served as associate director of the Georgia Tech Broadband Institute from 2006-2012 and is a co-PI for the GT I/UCRC Center on Optical Wireless Applications. He is an IEEE Fellow and a past recipient of the ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award, and he has won several best paper awards including at ACM MobiCom, the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, IEEE/CreateNet Broadnets, and the IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking.

About the Holman Family and the Holman Chair

The Holman Chair was established by Wayne J. Holman, III in memory of his grandfather, Wayne J. Holman, Sr., EE 1901, and his father, Wayne J. Holman, Jr., EE 1928, to honor their lifetime accomplishments and their legacies at Georgia Tech.

Holman, Sr., was a member of one of the first classes of graduates in the field of electrical engineering and was captain of the football team. He went on to build a career with Central Hudson Gas and Electric Company in New York, later founding and leading his own utility company.

Holman, Jr. served as the president of his senior class at Georgia Tech. Following graduation, he became an instructor at Yale University, where he earned his master’s degree in electrical engineering and then joined his father at Central Hudson Gas and Electric Company. He was one of the first Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a master’s degree in business and engineering administration, and later earned a doctorate in economics from New York University. Holman, Jr. became president of Chicopee Manufacturing Corporation, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, serving for 14 years before being named as treasurer of Johnson & Johnson, then as director of the company’s executive committee.

Throughout his career, Holman, Jr. was a member of many philanthropic and educational boards and received numerous accolades from his peers for his achievements. He also maintained a strong loyalty to and involvement with his alma mater, serving as a trustee of the Georgia Tech Foundation, heading the Greater New York Georgia Tech Alumni Club, and delivering the 75th commencement address in 1958.

Holman, Jr. created a lasting legacy for generations of Georgia Tech graduates by establishing the first Class Memorial Fund as a way for alumni to give back in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of their graduation. By creating the first class memorial fund, he instilled a sense of duty and devotion to Georgia Tech in his classmates and encouraged all alumni who followed to create their own class legacies. Through the Holman Fund, the legacies of these two men of accomplishment will continue to grow in perpetuity, serving as inspiration to future generations of faculty and students at Georgia Tech.