Date: Monday, October 24, 2022

Time: 12:30 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.

Location: Van Leer, WC240

Speaker: Cathleen Quigley

Speaker’s Title: Engineering Consultant

Speaker’s Affiliation: Swiftwater Consulting, LLC

Seminar Title: Many aspects of the data communications field have changed radically over the last 40 years. Indeed, digital electronics design has changed from designing with standard building block digital logic functions with a few dozen transistors to gate arrays to
standard cell and field programmable gate arrays with incredible densities. Analog design has moved from discrete and simple blocks to incredibly precise circuits along side millions of digital logic gates. Data communications as a field has grown spectacularly with the emergence of the Internet and a myriad high speed communications techniques. My career in data communications has spanned this dramatic evolution and has transitioned in multiple ways from designer to executive and corporate worker to entrepreneur to consultant. I worked on biphase communications circuits, 10 and 100Mb Ethernet integrated circuits, digital cable communications chips for high speed data and video, Wifi and others. I’ve also witnessed changes in the workplace, successfully transitioning from male to female. I hope to share insights about these various transitions in data communications and encourage students in finding their careers after graduation.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker: Cathleen Thomas Quigley is a transwoman engineer, performer, philanthropist and activist. She attended high school in Athens, Georgia before graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1984. She started the Residential Broadband Business Unit at Broadcom Corporation in 1996 and drove the development of the first DOCSIS Cable Modem, Cable Modem Termination System and integrated digital video integrated circuits and systems. She is a named inventor on over one hundred fifty US and European patents covering many of the building blocks of DOCSIS cable systems, as well as numerous digital video, mesh computing, mobile and wireless communication concepts.

After retiring from Broadcom’s Office of the CTO in 2008, she has consulted and served as an expert witness in broadband technology. Prior to Broadcom, she developed data communications chips and some of the first 100mb Ethernet chips for National Semiconductor and participated in the IEEE 802.3u and 802.14 standards activities.

She is a Broadcom Fellow and has been honored by her alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology, as a member of the Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni and Council of Outstanding Young Engineers.

She runs the Quigley Family Foundation and serves on various non-profit boards including the College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Past board involvement at Georgia Tech includes many years on the ECE Advisory Board, the President’s Advisory Board and the Alumni Board.

After too many years among engineers and scientists, she became a singer/songwriter and has released a CD called “Aversion to Reason” which, thankfully, is out of circulation. An avid guitarist, she sings and performs in a variety of venues mainly in Georgia where she lives with her standard poodle, Ruby.