frantz lohier
Computer Science graduate from Ecole Superieur D'Informatique, with MSc from Paris 6 University/ENSAM and PhD from Paris 6 University. 12+ years' blend of industrial and academic experience, currently working at Logitech Inc. as Staff Member.
| Headline: | Entrepreneur |
| Skills: | Engineering, English, French, German, Languages, Software Engineering |
| Groups: | 2011 UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, 2012 UC Berkeley Startup Competition, UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition 2009-2010, [INACTIVE] UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition 2008-2009 |
| Interested in: | Growing my group, Helping members of my groups, Meeting new people, Partnering with other groups, Professional opportunities, Sharing my projects |
WORK EXPERIENCE
| Employer: | Logitech Inc. - Internet & Communication Business Unit, California, USA |
| Position: | Managing Director Advanced Technology Unit, direct report to VP of Engineering, Staff Member |
| Time period: | December 2005 - Present |
| Description: | In charge of bringing Innovation to products.
Defined the Charter and Modus Operandi for a Chief Technology Officer department aimed at analyzing new technologies and bringing innovation to products. Managed department's budget (~700K$/year) and supervised direct staff (8 persons) within a complex world-wide matrix organization. Performed recruiting/training/reviews and motivated/focused work. Strategic Product and Technology roadmaping; led the process definition & implementation of a 3 years Product and Technology roadmap with Marketing and more than 30 engineers spanning 8 engineering desciplines. Aligned this roadmap with Business Unit's budget need and human resource capacity. Delivered ongoing Technologies intelligence for breaktru innovations opportunities by summarizing suppliers' competitive landscape and identifying cost/schedule/customer experience tradeoffs (~one report generated every month). Provided technical guidance to Business Development team for M&A and technology licensing opportunities. Led and supervised the creation of small teams in charge of de-risking new technology ingredients (e.g., next generation ASICs, signal processing algorithms, 3D capture/rendering and a Green product strategy) - largely drawing into PMI's management principles and Agile methodologies (acted as Scrum master on halfa-dozen project). Worked with the Company University incubator (localized within the Swiss EPFL school) to define and outsource advanced R&D activities and led the interaction with the MIT CE lab. Member and contributor to the Patent Review Committee managing IP portfolio (a dozen patents submitted per quarter). Knowledge of Hyperion and PeopleSoft administrative tools. |
| Employer: | Logitech Inc Video Business Unit, California, USA |
| Position: | Principal Systems Engineer |
| Time period: | December 2002 - November 2006 |
| Description: | Central counselor for technical and marketing aspects involving numerous hardware/software product opportunities within Logitech's third larger Business Unit.
Translated Marketing Requirement Document (MRD) into product specification for 4 product lines; high-end webcams (millions sold), cordless video product (a 18-month project I've led with teams spread on 3 time zones), network-enabled cameras and 2-way standalone communication devices (videophone and IP set-top box). Technology watch for the following portfolio; imaging sensors, HDMI, Wired Ethernet, Wifi, WUSB, video and audio codec, advanced embedded SoCs and networking protocols (H.323/SIP, RTP/RTCP/ASF, UPnP, NAT). Identified new suppliers for the above and performed product feasibility study at the optics/hardware/firmware/software level in terms of cost versus performance for the various sub-systems. In charge of the Bill Of Materials (BOM) and technical product roadmap for these categories. Wrote/managed RFQs/SOWs(Statement Of Work)/ATP (Acceptance Test Plans) for key out-sourced components (notably in Taiwan and India). Worked with Functional departments such as QA to firm up products' specification, reviewed and approved functional software and hardware specs, system verification plans, mass-production qualification plans. Led design reviews (accustomed to DFM\DFT\Six Sigma methodologies). Successfully led an 18-month ASIC development with a strategic offshore partner for the first USB 2.0 Video Class compliant megapixel webcam ever introduced in the market and optimized the image quality for the product. Knowledge of Oracle Agile Product Life Cycle Management software. |
| Employer: | Logitech Inc, Video Business Unit, California, USA |
| Position: | Lead Embedded Software Architect, Principal Firmware Engineer |
| Time period: | December 2000 - November 2003 |
| Description: | Led the firmware development of the industry-first low cost portable solid-state digital camcorder involving 10 developpers and representing ~1 million lines of C code. The design was delivered on time and was able to beat competitive produts thanks to a unique middleware architecture unrivaled to date.
Architected\implemented a multi-threaded- encode/decode audio-video streaming engine on top of a OMAPlike multi-core SoC. In charge of the software partitioning (20+ threads) and overall data flow management (reactive- and data- driven). Specified third-party deliverables, integrated sub-contracted modules in the proposed firmware framework. Ported the Nucleus RTOS on an ARM-7 core and re-designed the main interrupt handling module (C/assembly using Code Composer Studio\JTAG). Re-factored several subcontracted modules (boot module, inter-thread message passing interface and dynamic memory management). Analyzed several limiting aspects (file system, SDRAM) and tuned the system accordingly. In charge for the design and implementation of a centralized error logging system used by QA department. Guided Logitech in establishing a firmware department. Contributed to the firmware recruiting process by establishing a recruiting questionnaire and by filtering adequate candidates. Inculcated an embedded development discipline spanning the definition of coding conventions, the usage of a source revision system, the process of code reviews and that of unit regression testing. Produced a firmware training class and led the implementation of Xtreme programming methodology. Coached the work of 3 engineers. |
| Employer: | Berkeley Design Technology Inc (BDTi), Berkeley, USA |
| Position: | DSP Software Engineer |
| Time period: | December 1999 - November 2001 |
| Description: | Direct report to industry's figure Jeff Bier (EEtimes columnist). Analyzed state-of-the art DSP algorithms and DSP processor's architecture. Modeled several signal processing kernels on various DSPs and General Purpose Processors (GPPs). Ported/optimized high-level language implementations of numerous DSP algorithms (audio/video streaming and communication) on a wide variety of DSPs and GPPs featuring high instruction-level parallelism (e.g, C64x-type core and many more). Ported/optimized Real Network's Video 8 encoder for the cell phone and set-top box market. Designed and implemented benchmarking methodologies for processors and tools. Converted floating-point arithmetic to fixed-point and analyzed the impact on precision. Optimized memory I/O and cache usage. Co-author of the famous BDTI's "DSP Processors Buyers' Guide", 2001 edition |
| Employer: | Electronique Informatique Applications (EIA), Cofidur Group, Paris, France |
| Position: | DSP Software Engineer & Ph.D Candidate |
| Time period: | December 1995 - November 2000 |
| Description: | Designed, implemented & ported image processing algorithms for the state-of-the-art multi-core TMS320C80 DSP processor as well as the newly released and revolutionary TMS320C62x DSP (optimized MJPEG- and Wavelet-based compression codecs and ported real-time OSs). Successfully delivered multi-million dollar projects; a digital bank video surveillance system and a road traffic video analysis system (with Teledifusion De France) & a 360-degree video probe for off-shore oil exploration (with Schlumberger). Official workshop teacher for Texas Instruments' European Office (several workshops in English and French).
As a scientist; studied software optimization techniques for advanced parallel DSP processors (TMS320C80, TMS320C62, Trimedia, TigerSharc). Proposed/patented a novel JPEG2000- based image compression technique. Introduced a novel modeling/code generation technique to automate and optimize handling of complex data flows within multi-cores leveraging the capacity offered by advanced DMAs. |
PUBLICATIONS
| Articles: | 13 scientific articles including 2 nomination for best paper Award, 2 book chapters and 6 industrial patents. |
INFORMATION
| Hobbies: | Boating, Rollerblading, Golf, Video editing. Basic airplaine flying license. |
| Memberships: | IEEE, SPIE |
| Awards: | Won the 1992 edition of "Soft Qui Peut" - a European contest for young programmer thanks to an intelligent Scrabble game. IEEE Senior Member. |
