Professional of the Year - Computer Architecture/Engineering Management
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La Vaughn F. Watts Jr. |
Title: | Senior Vice President |
Industry: | Computer Architecture |
Type of Organization: | IT |
Major Product/Service: | Computer architecture services |
Expertise: | With over 45 years experience, Mr. Watts is responsible for operations, advanced engineering and development, manufacturing and power management. Currently, he serves as a computer architect specializing in engineering management, competitive analysis, new business development and semiconductors. He has over 40 years of computer experience. Mr. Watts has managed global teams and 7 figure R&D budgets. |
Geographic Area of Distribution: | National |
Affiliations: | I.E.E.E. |
University/Degree: | B.S., Linear Math, Algebra, University of Houston, 1973 |
Born: | December 3, 1945, Austin, Texas |
Hobbies/Sports: | Bowling, boating |
Children: | 3 children; 3 grandchildren |
Work History: | Mr. Watts served as a Dell Fellow for 4 years within the Personal Systems Group of Dell Computer, retiring from Dell in July 2001. After retiring from Dell Computer, he formed his own company providing engineering consultant services to Fortune 100 companies comprising various aspects of the engineering discipline from software to hardware/chip development, reverse engineering, and expert strategic analysis of product roadmaps and company product directions. Prior to joining Dell in 1997, Mr. Watts served as TI Fellow and Director of Mobile Computer Architecture Labs for Texas Instruments. He retired from TI after 25 years and was responsible for the architecture of TI's notebook computer line from concept through design, testing and manufacturing. |
Honors & Awards: | PC Magazine's Technical Excellent Award, for the design of the worlds thinnest full function notebook, the TravelMate 2000 |
Published Works: | 55 patents |
Career Accomplishments: | Mr. Watts served as Vice President of the Mobile Advisory Council (MAC) and was a member of the Board of Directors. He was an active member of MAC working group focusing on wireless communications and mobile computing initiatives. As a Dell Fellow, he was responsible for technology and architectures and how they related to future standards and industry initiatives for mobile computing. In this technical role, he provided leadership and technical content to standard efforts and working groups bringing technical expertise and a customer focused point of view to their initiatives. By providing technology group interfaces to various key industry wide initiatives and standards, the long-term initiatives and emerging standards are viewed from a system and customer point of view. Mr. Watts was responsible for the inclusion of these technologies within the Dell Notebook Computer providing Dell’s Enterprise customers with relative technology at competitive pricing at lower TCO leading Dell to the number one position in notebooks sales. During his tenure at Texas Instruments, Mr. Watts provided technology and strategic directions for telecommunication architectures related to personal computer architectures for wireless and land line applications, architectures for mobile buses such as PCMCIA and PCI and keep power management concepts found today within most mobile computer platforms. Mr. Watts lead TI into the Notebook PC business with the introduction of the world's first notebook computer in 1989. At the time he retired from TI, the company had reached a number one position in notebook sales in the U.S. |