“Managing complexity, that's what it comes down to when designing electronic chips and embedded digital systems. In order to do this, you not only have to be able to think very abstractly but also to distinguish quickly between what is just urgent and what is really important,” says Ramses Valvekens, electronics engineer from Group T and Chief Executive Officer of the Leuven high-tech company Easics N.V.
To California, Group T thesis at hand
Ramses graduated from Group T in 1994 as an electronics engineer in the Computer Techniques graduation track. He completed his award-winning thesis at IMEC. This allowed him to go to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California where he conducted experiments with image processing techniques. “Very instructive, and they also asked me to stay. The decision to return home wasn't the easiest.”
Civil engineering on the side
But Ramses did just that. After obtaining a degree in civil engineering from the K.U.Leuven—“purely out of interest”—and gaining some more international experience at the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, he could start at Easics. Inititally a design engineer, Ramses soon made it to the position of technical manager.
Taking charge
When TranSwitch, the then parent company of Easics, got into trouble, Ramses and a few enterprising colleagues set up a management buy-out and took control of the company. “In the meantime we have settled down comfortably in the brand new Arenberg Science Park in Heverlee, close to IMEC and the university, back to our roots.”
Inspiring others
And finally this still: Ramses Valvekens is not only engineer and entrepreneur, he is also a driven educator. As such, he trains engineers in The Netherlands who want to become system architects. He firmly believes that the current technological developments in the hard and software industry will not remain without consequences for science and technology education. Wait and see …
- www.easics.com
- Read the full story on Ramses Valvekens and Easics in Interview, Group T's periodical.
