Dr. Cong received his B.S. degree in computer science from Peking University in 1985, his M.S. and Ph. D. degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1987 and 1990, respectively. Currently, he is a Chancellor's Professor at the Computer Science Department of University of California, Los Angeles, and a co-director of the VLSI CAD Laboratory. He also served as the department chair from 2005 to 2008.

Dr. Cong co-founded AutoESL Design Technologies, Inc. in Jan. 2006, which licensed research results on high-level and system-level synthesis from the UCLA VLSI CAD Lab for commercialization. He serves as the Chief Technology Advisor and Chairman of the Board of AutoESL. Dr. Cong was also the founder and president of Aplus Design Technologies, Inc. (founded in 1998), until it was acquired by Magma Design Automation in 2003. In addition, Dr. Cong has served on the Technical Advisory Board of a number of EDA and silicon IP companies, including Atrenta, eASIC, Get2Chip, and Magma Design Automation.

Dr. Cong's has published over 300 research papers and led over 30 research projects. Dr. Cong received a number of awards and recognitions, including t the Ross J. Martin Award for Excellence in Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989, the NSF Young Investigator Award in 1993, the Northrop Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award from UCLA in 1993, the ACM/SIGDA Meritorious Service Award in 1998, and the SRC Technical Excellence Award in 2000. He also received four Best Paper Awards selected for the 1995 IEEE Trans. on CAD, the 2005 International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD), the 2005 ACM Transaction on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, and the 2008 International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), respectively. He was elected to an IEEE Fellow in 2000 and ACM Fellow in 2008.

Mr. Adams founded Adams Capital Management in 1994 and has led its growth to $815 million capital under management. Before establishing ACM, he served for eight years as Vice President and General Partner of Fostin Capital Corp., a Pittsburgh-based, family-owned investment firm.

Prior to Fostin, Mr. Adams served for seven years as a nuclear test engineer for General Dynamics, where he managed chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering teams and directed nuclear power plant sea trials. Mr. Adams is a member of several charitable organizations, a Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University and a frequently requested speaker on the topic of venture capital.

Atul Sharan is a 20+ year veteran of the hi-tech industry with experience as an engineer, manager, serial entrepreneur, senior executive and angel investor.

Prior to joining AutoESL in October 2008 he was co-founder, President and CEO of Clear Shape Technologies, Inc., which was acquired by Cadence in August 2007 where he then served as a Corporate Consultant. Previously Mr. Sharan was a resident at Mohr-Davidow Ventures, a premier Silicon Valley Venture firm while also providing CEO-consulting to start-ups. From 1998 to 2003, Mr. Sharan was Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Numerical Technologies, Inc. He was instrumental in growing the company from pre-revenue stage to a highly successful IPO in April 2000 and was a driver for its acquisition by Synopsys in 2003 where he then served Vice President. In addition, Mr. Sharan held executive and engineering management positions at Ambit Design Systems (acquired by Cadence in 1998); from 1991 to 1997 Mr. Sharan was at Compass Design Automation, where as GM-India Operations, he established a software development center in India. Mr. Sharan also worked for VLSI Technologies and Integrated Device Technology. At IDT he helped initiate the company's first overseas Test and Assembly plant in Penang, Malaysia.

Mr. Bolsens is senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) at Xilinx, Inc., with responsibility for advanced technology development, Xilinx research laboratories (XRL) and Xilinx university program (XUP).

Mr. Bolsens came to Xilinx in June 2001 from the Belgium-based research center IMEC, where he was vice president of information and communication systems. His research included the development of knowledge-based verification for VLSI circuits, design of digital signal processing applications, and wireless communication terminals. He also headed the research on design technology for high-level synthesis of DSP hardware, HW/SW co-design and system-on-chip design.