Viasat at EPFL Innovation Park receives the visit of its CEO
Mark Dankberg CEO and the Viasat team from Lausanne © A.Schick / 2018 EPFL
On September 12, 2018, Mark Dankberg, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, visited the Viasat team based at EPFL Innovation Park. An opportunity for the Vice presidency for Innovation to meet him and take stock of the company's activities at EPFL Innovation Park.
Viasat is an American company with 5,500 employees listed on the NASDAQ. It is the origin of the world's highest capacity communication satellites. With more than 700,000 network users in the United States and more than 150,000 in Europe, Viasat also offers high-speed Internet services to travelers by air, sea and in areas without traditional coverage.
In 2007, Viasat moved to EPFL Innovation Park and acquired the JAST spin-off. Co-founded in 2003 by Professor Juan R. Mosig of the Laboratory of Electromagnetism and Acoustics (LEMA), Stefano Vaccaro and Ferdinando Tiezzi, the two PhDs in Electromagnetism (2003), the multinational's European headquarters is therefore based on the campus!
With more than 75 employees on the EPFL site, it continues its research and development activities with the campus. "We collaborate with the campus in the acquisition of talent, particularly through internships and master's projects," explains Stefano Vaccaro, Managing Director at Viasat, "we recruit mainly in the fields of engineering but also in the field of technology management.”
Today, Viasat wants to expand its activities in the field of drones, as a technology integrator for applications related to security and border surveillance. The company is involved in several European Space Agency projects and H2020, a collaboration model that suits well to the American company.
On the picture, from the left: Ferdinando Tiezzi Director Satcom Solutions ; Jason Robbins Director of Business Operations ; Michael Rapelyea Government Affairs ; Evan Dixon Head of European Residential Broadband, Jean-Philippe Lallement, Managing Director (EPFL Innovation Park) ; Mark Dankberg CEO ; Robert Giezendanner-Thoben, Head of Business Development (EPFL), Stefano Vaccaro, Managing Director