MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Hammerhead Systems, Inc., the market leader in Layer 2.5 Aggregation solutions today announced the appointment of Dr. Richard Gitlin as Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Gitlin joins Hammerhead Systems after a distinguished 32-year career at Bell Labs and Lucent leading pioneering research in digital communications, broadband networking, and wireless systems. Dr. Gitlin was CTO of Lucent’s Data Networking Business Unit and Senior VP for Communications and Networking Research at Bell Labs. After retiring from Lucent, he was VP of Technology and CTO of NEC Labs America. He was also a professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University where he taught courses and supervised research in networking and wireless systems.

"The market has validated the key competitive differentiators of our HSX 6000 Layer 2.5 Aggregation Switch and as we continue to address our customers’ expectations and requirements for the most innovative technologies, I am delighted to have someone of Rich’s caliber, who pioneered many of the communication technologies that are indispensable tools for our business and personal lives today, join us to lead the vision, architecture, and requirements for our next generation product family," said Peter Savage, CEO of Hammerhead Systems.

"Hammerhead is uniquely positioned as a leader in advanced networking edge products with its HSX 6000 ingeniously architected to scale with in-service software and capacity upgrades to support evolving customer needs in the wireline, wireless, and cable markets," said Dr. Richard Gitlin, Hammerhead Systems CTO. "This, plus the opportunity to work with a first-rate team, some of whom are colleagues from my days at Bell Labs, made joining Hammerhead's executive team a compelling proposition.”

Throughout his career, Dr. Gitlin has both personally conducted and led pioneering research and development that has resulted in many innovative products, including: the industry leading ATLANTA ATM Chipset, the world’s first 20 gigabit/sec ATM switch, wire-speed and quality of service-aware IP switches, multicode CDMA (IS-95B), and the record-setting BLAST broadband wireless system based on advanced spatial domain (smart antenna/MIMO) processing. Earlier in his career he led the team that pioneered V.32/V.34 voice-band modems, and in 1986 he was co-inventor of DSL. His DSL work was instrumental in launching Globespan, an early DSL chip vendor.

Dr. Gitlin received a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Electrical Engineering from The City College of New York, and Masters and Doctor of Engineering Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University.

Hammerhead Systems Inc.