SAN FRANCISCO, May 2 - Hewlett-Packard Co. said on Wednesday it named Prith Banerjee as director of its storied HP Labs research unit, replacing Dick Lampman, who is retiring.
Banerjee, 46, who is presently dean of the college of engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will join HP as senior vice president, research, and director of HP Labs, effective August 1.
Banerjee will report to Shane Robison, who is chief strategy and technology officer for Palo Alto, California-based HP, long considered Silicon Valley's first start-up.
HP Labs is among only a handful of dedicated research labs at large technology companies, along with IBM Research at International Business Machines Corp.
HP Names Dean of University of Illinois at Chicago, Prith Banerjee, as Director of HP Labs
Wall Street Journal
May 2, 2007
HP (NYSE:HPQ) today named Prith Banerjee, dean of the college of engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), as senior vice president, research, and director of HP Labs, effective Aug. 1.
Hewlett-Packard Names New Director for Research Labs
Bloomberg
By Connie Guglielmo
May 2, 2007
May 2 (Bloomberg) -- Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest personal-computer and printer maker, named the dean of engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago as director of its research labs.
Prith Banerjee, 46, takes over from Richard Lampman, who announced his retirement in December, the Palo Alto, California- based company said today in a statement. Lampman, a 35-year company veteran, will stay on through Aug. 1.
HP Labs, established in 1966, has 600 researchers working in labs at the company's headquarters, as well as in India, England, China, Israel, Russia and Japan. Hewlett-Packard spends about $3.6 billion on research and development a year and has been licensing technology to boost returns on that expense. The labs' budget was about 5 percent of research and development spending last year.
Banerjee has been a research scientist, professor and administrator for the past 23 years and has served as engineering dean in Chicago since 2004, Hewlett-Packard said. He will report to Chief Technology Officer Shane Robison. Lampman had led the research department since 1999.
Shares of Hewlett-Packard rose 1 cent to $42.93 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They have gained 4.2 percent this year.
Banerjee to head research at HP
Financial Times
By Kevin Allison
May 2, 2007
Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest IT company, on Wednesday appointed a Chicago software engineer to head its research and development arm, ending a months-long search.
Prith Banerjee, dean of the college of engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will take over as head of HP Labs on August 1. He will replace Richard Lampman, a 35-year HP veteran who announced his retirement last year.
The appointment of Mr. Banerjee, who in addition to his academic career has also launched two startups, reflects HP's shifting research priorities.
The company, which spends $3.6bn a year on research both inside HP labs and inside the company's other business units, has said it intends to spend less money on basic research, focusing instead on solving more practical problems than can lead to new sales growth.
Shane Robison, HP's chief strategy officer, said Mr. Banerjee's background in academics and entrepreneurship made him an "outstanding choice to lead HP labs."
In 2000, Mr. Banerjee founded AccelChip, a specialty software company that sold to Xilinx, a chipmaker, last year. In 2004 he started Binachip, another software group.
Mr. Banerjee will lead a team of HP scientists working in labs in California, India, China, England, Israel, Russia and Japan.
H-P Names Research Chief
TheStreet
By Alexei Oreskovic
May 2, 2007
Hewlett-Packard named a new director for its research division Wednesday.
The tech giant said that Prith Banerjee, dean of the college of engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will head up HP Labs as of August 1.
Banerjee, 46 years old, succeeds Richard Lampman, who announced his plans to retire in December after seven years of leading H-P Labs -- and 35 years with H-P.
According to H-P, Banerjee has been granted several patents and has research interests which include parallel and distributed computing, compilers and computer-aided design. He will report to Shane Robison, H-P's chief strategy officer.
"Technology is at the core of H-P, and Prith's mandate is to ensure that H-P Labs continues to be one of the world's leading research organizations," said Robison in a statement.
H-P labs serves as the company's central research division devoted to scientific advances, although it accounts for only a portion of the $3.6 billion that H-P spent on research and development last year. In January, H-P Labs announced it was opening a facility in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Lab's sixth overseas outpost.
Shares of H-P were up 2 cents to $42.95 in extended trading.
Engineering dean named new HP Labs director
CNET News Blog
By Stephen Shankland
May 2, 2007
Hewlett-Packard has named Prith Banerjee, dean of the college of engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a founder of two start-ups, as the new director of HP Labs, the computer and printer company said Wednesday.
Banerjee, 46, will take over August 1, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said. Dick Lampman, the earlier director, announced in 2006 that he'd retire this year.
Banerjee has spent 23 years as a research scientist, professor and administrator in the domain of electrical engineering and computer science. His interest has been in running computing tasks in parallel on groups of computers, the compiler software used to translate human-written programs into instructions computers understand, and using computers to design large processors.
He founded two start-ups, AccelChip in 2000 and Binachip in 2004.
"Technology is at the core of HP, and Prith's mandate is to ensure that HP Labs continues to be one of the world's leading research organizations," HP Chief Technology Officer Shane Robison said in a statement.
UIC dean named Hewlett-Packard exec
Chicago Business
UIC dean to lead HP research labs
Chicago Sun-Times