Dr. Alireza Mehrnia has more than 15 years of experience in high-tech industry and holds more than 20 granted or pending patents. He has also taught engineering and management courses at UCLA, UCI and CSULB.

Dr. Mehrnia received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA in 2006 and M.B.A. from the Anderson School of Management, UCLA in 2013 with a focus on technology management and business analytics. He received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 1998. Dr. Mehrnia is the recipient of the UCLA Edward K. Rice outstanding engineering doctoral graduate of the year 2006 and the best paper award from the ACM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation in 2004.

Dr. Mehrnia worked at SpaceX from 2015 to 2023 where he led the design of signal processing and wireless communication techniques for chips enabling 4000+ Starlink satellites and 1M+ user terminals (globally deployed) to realize the first commercial Giga-bit/s satellite mega constellation and communication system. From 2004 to 2009, he was a founding engineer and the Director of wireless communications at WiLinx Corp. (a VC-funded high-tech startup) designing one of the first commercial wireless USB chips based on Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology. He also represented the company in the UWB global standardization organization (WiMedia Alliance) and was the lead consultant in response to the Bluetooth board of directors’ request for a feasibility study of UWB data rate and range. Throughout this work, he contributed to the development of the Physical Layer and Architecture of the first Giga-bit/s commercial wireless standard as a technical contributor and later as the interim chairman of the worldwide UWB regulation. From 1998 to 2001, he worked as a design lead in a high-tech startup on the wireless communication system and implementation of a low power 12-satellite tracking GPS receiver for mobile applications.