Dr. George Huang
Dr. George Huang (Ph.D. ’73), CEO and Chairman of FutureDial, will be the University of Washington Department of Electrical Engineering’s (UW EE) 2017 graduation speaker at the June 7th ceremony.
For Dr. Huang, being a top industry leader involves demonstrating significant societal impact. Over the years, he witnessed numerous successful business accomplishments. Particularly, his impact on green desktop technology paved the way for other companies to follow.
As CEO and Chairman of Award Software, a BIOS manufacturer in California, Dr. Huang established industry standards for the production and use of green BIOS. This type of firmware notices when the computer is not in use and will power down to preserve energy.
After the 1998 merger with Phoenix Technology (where he held the position of Vice-Chairman), Award utilized the brainpower of two strong tech companies to develop additional green features, including the ACPI (Advanced Configuration Power Interface). The ACPI is an open standard that operating systems can use to perform power management (i.e. a computer “going to sleep”). Today, almost all PC manufacturers have adopted the ACPI standards that Huang’s company developed.
With over 30 years of business experience, Dr. Huang continues to make an impact. He began in 1984 at GCH Systems (a company he founded), which develops and markets embedded controllers, ASICs and PC systems. After acquiring Award Software and merging with Phoenix Technologies, he has brought his extensive corporate management skills as the Chairman and CEO of FutureDial.
FutureDial is a leading provider-of-choice of mobile device processing solutions for Wireless Carriers, Mobile Device Buy-Back Trade-In companies and Third-Party Logistics Providers (3PL). In March, the company announced that it surpassed over 33 million mobile devices processed worldwide. This is significant growth for a company of its size.
In 2009, Dr. Huang was selected by Venrock, a VC Rockefeller fund, as one of the 40 most successful entrepreneurs. He continues to expand the boundary of what’s possible in technology and leaves a generous legacy for other companies to follow.
During his Ph.D. at UW EE, Dr. Huang’s advisor was Professor Dean Lytle. In honor of this relationship, Dr. Huang has been a loyal supporter of the Lytle Lecture Endowed Fund, which features internationally-renowned researchers in the field of communications and signal processing. Lectures are free and open to the public. Giving back is important to the Huangs as a family, and they support many causes through their foundation, including their alma maters.
UW EE’s graduation ceremony will take place on Wednesday, June 7 at 7:00 p.m. at the Hec Edmondson Pavilion. For more information, please visit the department’s graduation website.