Bio

Dr. Ryan Chiang is currently working for IBM as a Senior Managing Consultant in the field of Big Data and Analytics. He has been involved in Big Data projects with various clients including Cox, Comcast, Fannie Mae, PepsiCo, Ford, AT&T, Apple and Anthem. Dr. Chiang is also the Chair of Monte Jade Science and Technology Association Southeastern USA and the principal of Pion Technology.

Dr. Ryan Chiang received his B.S. degree and M.S. degree, respectively, in 1982 and 1984 from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He then studied at Penn State University and received his Ph.D. degree in 1991. Afterwards, he worked at Laboratory of Elementary Particle Science, Penn State as a post-doctoral research associate for two years. While in Penn State, he published six journal articles in various journals including Physics of Fluids and Journal of Applied Physics. He also published more than a dozen of conference papers.

Dr. Chiang later worked for Philips Research Laboratory, Taipei as a Software Group Lead and moved in 1998 to Cupertino, CA, USA, working for Philips Semiconductors. He later joined PowerTV, a subsidiary of Scientific Atlanta, as an OS Development manager. The Digital Video Recorder (DVR) Set-Top Box (STB,) developed by his team, was sold over 20 million units in North America and Europe. The success of the product boosted significantly Scientific Atlanta’s market value. The company was later acquired by Cisco at US$ 7 billion, which was the largest acquisition in Cisco’s history.

After transitioning into Cisco, Dr. Chiang was promoted to an Engineering Director in charge of Media Gateway Development group of 60 personnel. The group was later integrated into VideoScape business unit developing end-to-end Video system leveraging Content Delivery Network (CDN). 

In 2011, Dr. Chiang took an early retirement from Cisco and formed his own company, Pion Technology. Pion provided consulting service to Cable Industry, including several Cable Operators and CableLabs. Dr. Chiang, on behalf of CableLabs, was the chairperson of several Task Forces under Technical Committee and Compliance and Test Committee in Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA,) where the Tasks Forces were assigned to develop the advanced standards for home networked consumer devices.

Considering the emerging Big Data technology in 2013, Pion started to embrace the technology and worked with Cox Communications on a proof-of-concept project leveraging Hadoop/Spark platform to predict HDD failure and monitor STB HW/SW Health. The project terminated due to lack of budget in Cox.

In 2013 and 2014, Dr. Chiang received, respectively, two Outstanding Contribution Award from Digital Living Network Alliance. In 2013, his ex-team back in Cisco was awarded an Emmy for pioneering development of Cisco Multi Room DVR in which he was the primary leader. He was invited back to Cisco to participate the ceremony alongside the other team members.

All faculties and students are welcome to join.