Hemant Thapar
BS ’73, MS ’75 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
In 2018, Hemant Thapar was selected for the School of Engineering’s highest honor, the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award for his his advancement of electrical and computer science and engineering, and service to the School of Engineering.
Hemant Thapar is the Chairman, CEO, and Co-founder of OmniTier Inc.. He previously founded and led two successful startups, DataPath Systems and Link_A_Media Devices, which were acquired by LSI Corporation and SK Hynix, respectively. Together, these startups delivered many “industry firsts” in controllers for data storage and data recovery and system-on- a-chip technologies, contributing to the shipment of over hundred million chips for hard disk drives and solid state drives.
During his early career, Dr. Thapar held technical and management positions at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Holmdel, and at IBM Corporation, San Jose, where he made pioneering contributions in circuit-switched networking, data communications, and data storage. He has over 50 publications in the areas of data communications and storage, and his work on Extended Partial Response (EPR) Systems became the de facto industry standard for data recovery in hard disk drive and tape drive products. He is co-recipient of three best paper awards, and served as a guest editor of two special issues of the IEEE Transactions on Selected Areas in Communications devoted to data storage technologies.
Dr. Thapar was elected Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to the theory, development, and commercial deployment of advanced data recovery methods in data storage and transmission. He holds a Ph. D degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
Dr. Thapar serves on the Board of Directors of Assia Corporation, and on the Advisory Board of India’s Ambala College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has given generously to Santa Clara University as an adjunct lecturer in Electrical Engineering from 1984 to 2004, and as a current advisory board member for the School of Engineering.
For his advancement of electrical and computer science and engineering, and service to the School of Engineering, Hemant Thapar receives this award.
Update: Feb. 2019, Hemant Thapar has been elected to one of his industry’s highest bodies, the National Academy of Engineering.