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Dr. Robert M. ("Bob") Metcalfe is a general partner in the Polaris East Coast office. Bob joined Polaris in January of 2001. He specializes in Boston area based information technology start-ups.Experience:Bob had three careers before becoming a venture capitalist:While an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Bob helped build the early Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he invented Ethernet, the local-area networking (LAN) standard on which he shares four patents. In 2003, Ethernet's 30th year, 184 million new Ethernet connections were shipped for $12.5 billion. While an entrepreneur-executive (1979-1990), Bob founded 3Com Corporation, the billion-dollar networking company where at various times he was Chairman, CEO, division general manager, and vice president of engineering, sales, and marketing. While a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Bob was CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992-1995). For eight years, he wrote an Internet column read weekly by over 500,000 information technologists. He spoke often; appeared on radio, television, and the web; and produced conferences including ACM97, ACM1, Agenda, Pop!Tech, and Vortex. Bob's book credits include Packet Communication (Thomson), Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry (IDG Books), and Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing (co-edited for Springer Verlag).Boards: Bob serves on the boards of Polaris portfolio companies Ember , Narad , Paratek and SiCortex . He is chairman of Paratek. He is also a director of Avistar, IDC, IDG, MIT, Pop!Tech, St. Mark's School, and MIT's Technology Review Magazine .Education:Bob graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 with bachelor degrees in electrical engineering and in management. He received an M.S. in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1970. In 1973, he received his Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard, where his doctoral dissertation was titled, "Packet Communication." Awards:Among numerous awards, Bob received the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1980. In 1988, he received the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In 1995, Bob was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he received the IEEE's Medal of Honor. In 1997, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 1999, he was elected to the International Engineering Consortium. In 2003, Bob won the Marconi International Fellowship and was inducted into the prestigious Bay Shore High School Hall of Fame. He also has been awarded three honorary doctorates. | 