Mike Lubin

Vice-​President Corporate Development, Viasat

Mr Michael Lubin (CIT ’68), an executive in the telecommunications and semiconductor industries for some 40 years, earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at the Case Institute of Technology. His subsequent studies led him to Yale University, where he completed a master’s degree in physics, and to Wesleyan University, where he pursued doctoral work in general relativity. Before entering the corporate world, he was a physics professor and an academic dean at Worcester Junior College in Massachusetts.

Lubin has fostered advances across a broad range of technologies. During the 1980s, he was a leader in the development of Ku-band VSATs, a satellite communications system for home and business users. A company he co-founded in the 1990s produced handset chipsets (integrated circuits for mobile phones) and wireless routers. Lubin’s team also patented a cellphone with an Internet Protocol (IP) address—a device that some regard as the first smartphone. Another company he founded was a pioneer in Internet music.

​ Since 2005, Lubin has been vice president of corporate development and senior advisor at ViaSat, where he is involved with mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships and emerging uses of broadband connectivity. Recently, he was invited to speak at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome on whether connectivity should be a human right. Lubin has served on boards and advisory councils of several corporations, arts organizations and educational institutions, including Case Western Reserve.