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CUE 2004

ALUMNI PROFILES
Investing in the Future through Engineering Education

David Fischer

When David Fischer (ElecEngr '76) attended the College of Engineering and Applied Science, it was a very difficult time to get internships. As a result, he spent his first year on the job picking up the practical experience he had missed as a student.

"After a year, the strong theoretical training CU provided was being used. I was exceeding the performance of other engineers, and my career really took off," recalls Fischer, who is now a director of engineering at Broadcom Communications in Irvine, Calif. "I know my education at CU was excellent."

After graduation, Fischer worked in the aerospace and defense industries, and then in medical electronics, before finding his niche in the early '80s in the development of local area network technologies. In 1994, he became one of the first 20 employees at Broadcom, a start-up company that has since grown to employ 3,000 people.

Among Fischer's proudest accomplishments is the development of the 100-Base-T standard for networking, which was adopted by the industry in 1995. Fischer was involved with the development of the technology, its subsequent standardization by the IEEE, and he played a significant role positioning the technology to gain broad acceptance. "It's very gratifying to see something that I worked on now being used by so many people."

Recognizing the value of his CU degree to his success, he and his wife, Kathryn, decided to make a major donation to support the Dean's Fund for Excellence.

"My wife and I wanted to invest in the future of our society and of mankind," says Fischer, who has a 10-year-old son. "We think that educating people well in technology is fundamental to success in the type of world in which we live."