AUSTIN, Texas—Dr. T. J. Rodgers, an outspoken critic of government involvement with technology industries and president and chief executive officer of Cypress Semiconductor Corp., will speak at The University of Texas at Austin’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series from 3-4 p.m., Monday Jan. 27 in the ACES Auditorium Room 2.302. The lecture is open to the public.
The topic of Rodgers’ discussion is “Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations with Washington, D.C.” Rodgers, whose San Jose, Calif., company is a global supplier of high-performance integrated circuits, calls government aid to technology industries corporate welfare.
“If we go to the government and start whining, pretty soon the government owns enough of us that they start mandating things that we need to do. Pretty soon we have another government-controlled industry,” he told Investor’s Business Daily.
Rodgers graduated from Dartmouth College as salutatorian with a double major in chemistry and physics. He then attended Stanford University, where he earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.
In 1982 he founded Cypress, after working for American Microsystems Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices. The Wall Street Journal has called it “a quintessential entrepreneurial company,” and its management team has received many awards for excellence in financial management. In its October 2001 issue, Upside Magazine called Rodgers one of the “100 People Who Changed Our World.” More information is available at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Web site.
For more information contact: Becky Rische, 512-471-7272, or Stephanie Peco, 512-232-4298.
