Tuesday, November 4, 2008
12:00 PM

Dr. John C. Zolper, Raytheon Company

Dr. John C. Zolper is Vice President of Corporate Research & Development and is  Deputy for Corporate Technology and Research for Raytheon Company. He has been with the company since December 2007.

Raytheon Company, with 2007 sales of $21.3 billion, is an industry leader in defense and government electronics, space, information technology, and technical services. Headquartered in Waltham, MA, Raytheon employs 72,000 people worldwide.

Dr. Zolper is responsible for working with Ms. Heidi Shyu, Corporate Vice President of Technology and Research, on the development and execution of an integrated enterprise-wide technology and research vision and strategy.  He is a participant on the Engineering & Technology Council as well as Deputy Chair of the Technology Leadership Team.

Prior to his current position, Dr. Zolper was Director of the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He was responsible for strategic planning and execution of a portfolio of over 75 research programs with an annual budget over $400M covering all areas of advanced component technology including electronics, photonics, MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS), algorithms, and component architecture.

Prior to being appointed Director of MTO, Dr. Zolper was Chief Scientist/Deputy Director of MTO and program manager in the same office.  Dr. Zolper was a primary contributor in initiating DARPA’s multi-year $250M Wide Bandgap Semiconductor program and was lead program manager for the Technology for Frequency Agile Digitally Synthesized Transmitters (TFAST) program that established new levels of transistor and mixed signal circuit performance based on aggressively scaled Indium Phosphide Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBTs).

Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Zolper was a program officer at the Office of Naval Research from 1997 to 2001 where he managed a portfolio of basic and applied research in advanced electronics.

From 1989 to 1997, Dr. Zolper was a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.  Dr. Zolper also spent time at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, from 1988 to 1989 as a Unisearch Post-Doctoral Fellow performing research on high efficiency silicon solar cells.

Dr. Zolper was awarded the Exceptional Public Service Award from OSD in 2007.  He was awarded the Ph.D. and MEE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 1987 and 1985, respectively, and a BA in Physics from Gettysburg College in 1982.  He is a senior member of the IEEE and is widely published.