Engineer, inventor, founder
He spent five decades putting video, networks and signal processing onto silicon. Then he walked away from it to build a cancer test a person could run at home.
48 years behind the camera See the collection
Career
2016 to present
Founder and CEO
He left Broadcom intending to put his technologies to work against cancer. The company spent nearly a decade in stealth, without so much as a landing page, creating what that took, and getting the assay to work.
2020 to present
Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering
1996 to 2016
Senior VP of Engineering, Chief Scientist of Central Engineering, Broadcom Fellow
He arrived as a Technical Director and left the Office of the CTO as Senior Vice President of Engineering, and Chief Scientist of Central Engineering. He designed and built Broadcom’s first complete standard cell library using a custom circuit approach, the decision feedback equalizers for its Fast Ethernet transceivers, and the DSP processors for its Gigabit Ethernet transceivers, and wrote custom EDA tools, the likes of which were not done anywhere else in the world. He went on to lead an R&D team across high performance processor cores, high speed memories, DSP cores for wireless, LDPC cores, process node evaluation, low power design and 3D packaging. The company named him its number one patent holder in 2005 and 2006, and a Broadcom Fellow in 2011.
1991 to 1996
Co-Founder and Vice President of Technology
A custom silicon design house, and his first turn as a co-founder. The company created the world’s first real-time video communication chip, among many other achievements. SDE was acquired by Level One Corporation, and Level One was later acquired by Intel.
1982 to 1991
Member, then Distinguished Member of Technical Staff
Visual Communications Research, and VLSI Systems Research. Named a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in 1988. He also lectured on graduate VLSI design at Princeton from 1987 to 1988. Numerous world-first accomplishments at Bell Labs.
1978 to 1982
Graduate researcher, University of Michigan
Still a doctoral student, he built the hardware and software behind biomedical experiments that flew on the Shuttle.
Record
He is named as an inventor on 246 issued patents and numerous patents pending, and has 69 publications. More than 90% of the patents have been used in products worldwide, across circuits and semiconductors, communications, signal and image processing, medical devices and assays, water, and energy.
Electronic circuits and systems, Integrated semiconductor circuits and SoC chips, Adaptive circuits, Integrated circuit library cells and layout techniques
Digital communication systems, Gigabit Ethernet transceivers, Fast Ethernet transceivers, 5G wireless communication systems, IoT devices
Signal processing algorithms and systems, Image processing algorithms and systems, High speed pipelined processing systems
Drug and vaccine delivery medical devices, IV injection devices, Dose-controlled drug delivery devices, Microfluidic chips and devices, Lateral flow assay technologies, Automated blood extraction, Blood thickness monitoring, Exosome-based biomarker detection assays, Cancer screening technologies
Modular water desalination systems
Wave engines for generating electricity from ocean waves, Floating solar platforms
Peltbeam
Executive Advisor
IC Photonics
Senior Fellow and Advisor
Parthian Energy
Advisor
SIG Angels
Member
Vivera Pharmaceuticals
Chief Scientific Advisor
Athanor Biosciences
Advisory Board
Nouslogic Telehealth Inc.
Advisory Board Member
Recognition
Member, elected 2016
For contributions to development of integrated circuits for video, communications, and digital signal processing.
Life Fellow
For his contribution to the design of high-performance digital signal processors.
ECE Alumni Merit Award, 2008
ECE Impact Award, 2024
The highest recognition granted by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department to its alumni.
Fellow, 2011. Number one Patent Holder, 2005 and 2006.
For contributions to high performance digital signal processors, logic and memory design.
Honorary Ph.D.
Judges' Choice and People's Choice.
Current work
2Pi-Sigma Corporation
A rapid, exosome-based liquid biopsy read from a fingerstick, on a cartridge built like the COVID-19 rapid tests everyone now recognizes.
He lost a sister and his father to cancer. Another sister survived it twice, both times because it was found early. That is the whole argument for screening, and he had it at home before he had it on a bench.
A $50 cartridge, run at home often enough to catch a cancer as it starts. He set that target on the company’s first day and calls it nearly impossible.
He had the dream job at what is now a near two-trillion-dollar company, and he quit to follow this passion.
Mehdi Hatamian, on leaving Broadcom
The assay starts with the four most common cancers, lung, breast, prostate and colon, which together are more than half of cases worldwide. The project is collecting data for a few more years before it goes for FDA trials.
Underneath the cartridge is a proprietary, digitally controlled next generation lateral flow assay and a microfluidics platform, both developed and protected by the company. Beyond the serum results above, tissue biopsy tests on 1,481 tissue samples from 17 different cancers have yielded comparable results. The company spent nine years in stealth mode, has concluded its series A raise, and is creating a CLIA laboratory in collaboration with an established laboratory ahead of the FDA trial for the home test.
A pop quiz
Talks and interviews. Click one and it plays here.
Technologies
One central point about all these technologies is the ability to transfer the know-how, and to hire local engineers and business people: a big factor in the growth strategy for any country trying to catch up with the wave of the future.
Peltbeam is a high-tech company based in California. It has developed an entirely new AI-controlled WiFi based communication system, in the 5GHz and 6GHz unlicensed bands, offering multi-gigabit rates for both distribution and wireless backhaul.
A rapid at-home screening test for the early detection of the majority of cancers, from only a few microliters of blood.
Mediccene has spent four years designing, building and testing a new portable and entirely mobile IV delivery system at its facilities in Orange County, California. The device allows complete patient mobility without being tethered to an IV pole or a bed. It applies to any IV delivery scenario, at home, in hospitals, at points of care and infusion centers, in the field and in emergency transport, and is fully compatible with existing IV needles and tubing. The company is finalizing prototyping and testing ahead of high volume manufacturing and an FDA submission.
A highly modular and scalable water desalination technology. It is not based on conventional reverse osmosis and requires no external electricity from a power plant, generating what it needs from solar and wind. The same node repeats as many times as needed to increase capacity linearly. A test bench model has produced drinkable, pure water from ocean water taken off the California coast.
A wearable microneedle-array-based intradermal drug and vaccine delivery system, in Mediccene’s pipeline at prototyping stage.
Hobbies
He has carried a camera for 48 years. Storms and jets, orchids and tigers, and the places that made him stop.
Building and flying large scale radio-controlled helicopters, jets and airplanes. He is designing, building and testing new auto-pilot and auto-landing systems for RC jets and helicopters.
Art work and sculptures made from silicon wafers and chips.
Electronic tracking for sports applications, and hardware and software for automation and control.
His general theme in life and philosophy is being happy and making people happy. To that end he is writing a book called “64 Elements of Happiness”.
Contact
Mehdi Hatamian, Ph.D.
CEO and Founder, 2Pi-Sigma Corporation
Irvine, California, USA
