Dr. Raif Onvural left his homeland of Turkey in 1982 on a government scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in the United States. At NC State, Onvural quickly found a connection with Prof. Harry Perros, who made a profound impact on him as a student and individual. He received his Ph.D. in 1987. After graduating, he worked at NCSU as a postdoc for a year, then began working as a performance analyst at Bell Northern Research (BNR), the research arm of Nortel Networks. After his initial job in the field, he left to lead a system architecture team at IBM. After six years at IBM, he launched Allied Telesyn International’s Raleigh operations. During these years, he authored a technical book on ATM, co-authored two other books, organized a number of conferences and was the co-editor of six conference proceedings, published 15 papers in first-tier journals, and was co-inventor of 12 US patents. Allied Telesyn operations were shut down after a year, giving Onvural the chance to capitalize on another opportunity. Onvural partnered with four colleagues to launch Orologic, Inc. This new business was founded on the belief that the major technology players in computer networking would evolve their business models to outsource their need for design and manufacture of highly specialized digital semiconductor chips.His new business venture humbly began with $125K in venture capital funding in 1997, and was essentially a garage operation. While his venture had many doubters, Onvural and his colleagues didn’t give up on their dreams. In October 1998, they began to prove doubters wrong. At InterOp’98 tradeshow, a Cisco executive approached the team about their product plans, followed by major deals with Alcatel and other high tech players. Interest in their business model and products skyrocketed and Onvural soon found himself negotiating with AMCC over the purchase of Orologic. Three months after the original deal fell through with AMCC after agreeing to sell the company for $250 million, Orologic was finally sold to Vitesse Semiconductor for $450 million.Onvural and his team worked at Vitesse for about two years, delivering their products. He was the Vice President of the Multiservice Solutions group at Vitesse. After Vitesse shutdown Raleigh operations, Onvural became the CEO of Litchfield Communications Inc in Watertown, CT. After shutting down that operation due to changed business conditions in the market during the Internet bubble, he started Orobridge to design and develop SiGe thermoelectric chips with nanowires, with Prof. Mehmet Ozturk at NCSU. The design did not work as expected and that operation was shut down as well. In 2009, Onvural went to Turkey to take care of his parents and became a faculty member at Maltepe University. With a grant from Turkish Telekom, he developed mobile applications for visually impaired. He is currently the founder and CEO of another startup company, funded by a Turkish government agency, to develop mobile applications to define and follow up on the treatment of diabetic patients.