MEET THE team

XCOM founders

Left to right: XCOM Labs CTO Matt Grob, CEO & Chairman Paul Jacobs and Executive Vice Chairman Derek Aberle

PAUL JACOBS ​

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Paul E. Jacobs, Ph.D., founded XCOM in 2018 to #keepinventing and to invest with the world’s most creative engineers and businesspeople.

DEREK ABERLE

Executive Vice Chairman

Derek K. Aberle, co-founder and vice chairman, oversees XCOM’s strategy, business development, investment activity and operations.

MATT GROB​

Chief Technology Officer

Matt Grob, chief technology officer of XCOM, is responsible for XCOM Labs, which develops innovative wireless technologies.

XCOM leaders

Meet our technical leadership.

Peter black

Chief Scientist

An electrical engineering Ph.D. with over 200 U.S. patents.

TAMER KADOUS

Vice President of Wireless

An engineering leader on UMB, LTE, LTE-U, Multefire & 5G NR.

DAAMAN HEJMADI

Vice President of Engineering

An executive and engineer for startups to Fortune 500s.

Meet our leaders.

Dev Khoslaa

Vice President of Sales and Business Development

Mary Stewart

Vice President of Human Resources

Clif Scott

Vice President of Operations

XCOM engineers

The XCOM workplace is a collaborative environment and a great place to advance your engineering career.

​​Executive Bios

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

PAUL JACOBS ​​

Paul E. Jacobs, Ph.D., founded XCOM in 2018 to #keepinventing and to invest with the world’s most creative engineers and businesspeople.

As former chief executive officer and executive chairman of Qualcomm Incorporated, Dr. Jacobs spearheaded its efforts to develop and commercialize fundamental mobile technology breakthroughs that fueled the wireless internet and smartphone revolutions. During his tenure as CEO, Qualcomm’s revenues quadrupled and its market capitalization doubled. Dr. Jacobs is a prolific inventor with over 80 U.S. patents granted or pending in the field of wireless technology and devices.

He served as a director of Qualcomm Incorporated from June 2005 to March 2018, including as chairman of the board of directors from March 2009 to March 2018, and as executive chairman from March 2014 to March 2018. He served as chief executive officer from July 2005 to March 2014, and as group president of Qualcomm Wireless & Internet from July 2001 to July 2005. In addition, he served as an executive vice president of Qualcomm Incorporated from February 2000 to June 2005.

Dr. Jacobs is a director of Dropbox, Inc., Arm Limited and FIRST. He is an owner and vice chairman of the Sacramento Kings, who compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science, M.S. in electrical engineering, and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science. He founded Berkeley’s Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation and was the university’s 2017 Alumnus of the Year. He serves as Affiliate Faculty in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Dr Jacobs is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Executive Vice Chairman

DEREK ABERLE​

Derek K. Aberle, co-founder and executive vice chairman of XCOM, oversees XCOM’s strategy, business development, investment activity and operations. He previously spent 17 years at Qualcomm, including as president from March 2014 to January 2018. He served as a member of Qualcomm’s executive committee beginning in 2008, executive vice president and group president from November 2011 to March 2014 and executive vice president and president of Qualcomm Technology Licensing from September 2008 to November 2011. He was responsible for driving Qualcomm’s global strategy and overseeing its business units, international markets and marketing functions. Mr. Aberle also oversaw many of Qualcomm’s global growth initiatives, including its datacenter unit and its expansion in China. He also led Qualcomm’s technology and IP licensing business through a period of strong growth, established its 4G licensing program, and structured and negotiated Qualcomm’s major license and other strategic agreements.

Mr. Aberle holds a B.A. in business economics from University of California, Santa Barbara, and a J.D. from University of San Diego School of Law. He is a board member for the Alliance for SoCal Innovation and EvoNexus (a Southern California incubator).

Chief Technology Officer

MATTHEW S. GROB

Matt Grob, chief technology officer of XCOM, is responsible for XCOM Labs, which develops innovative wireless technologies.  Matt previously spent over 26 years at Qualcomm in technology and engineering leadership roles. He served as Qualcomm’s EVP and CTO from 2011 to 2017, overseeing R&D and managing a global team of 2,200 employees across various divisions worldwide, and later as EVP/Technology.

Mr. Grob holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Bradley University and a M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He is a trustee of the Fleet Science Center in San Diego, and a volunteer for over a decade at FIRST, the robotics and education organization inspiring future leaders in science and technology.

Chief Scientist

Peter black

Previously an SVP of Technology and Fellow at Qualcomm, XCOM Labs Chief Scientist Peter Black has worked on wireless system designs spanning 2G/3G/4G/5G. He contributed to all aspects of the life cycle of new innovations, starting with the concept, system design, prototype, evangelization, standardization, and finally the commercial ASIC realizations. He was a modem system architect in 1995 for the first commercial CDMA modem chip – the foundational Qualcomm chip-set product. In 1998, Peter co-led an R&D project which led to the high-speed Mobile Internet starting with 1xEV-DO. Concepts such as shared downlink, adaptive HARQ, link adaption, carrier-state feedback, fairness scheduling, carrier aggregation and cellular broadcast were designed, prototyped, standardized, and commercialized over the next 10 years under his direct technical leadership. The 3GPP HSDPA standard was motivated by and based on this foundational EVDO work. He holds 200+ US patents and holds a B.E. in EE from University of Queensland and was awarded a University Medal. He was also awarded a Fulbright Traveling Scholarship and attended Stanford University graduating with an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. 

Vice President of Wireless

Tamer kadous

Tamer Kadous is currently the VP of wireless in XCOM responsible for building and commercializing 5G technologies for KPI-demanding applications with emphasis on Xtended Reality (XR). In his current role, Tamer drives the wireless system across disciplines design, implementation, testing and deployment with tight integration of Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual reality (VR) applications. A primary design focus has been to understand multimedia pain points, to tailor the wireless transport for optimized End-to-End XR experience, and to meet the demanded but conflicting application’s KPIs. Under Tamer’s leadership, two systems have been built for licensed and unlicensed spectrum wireless technologies, deployed as pilots, and in the process of being commercialized.  

Before XCOM, Tamer worked in Qualcomm Research where his career focused on wireless communication systems design and implementation spanning areas of physical, MAC, upper layers, and RF Systems. He has held the role of Design Architect, Systems Lead and Project Lead for a variety of projects focusing on wireless innovations in WAN and connectivity areas including UMB (ultra-mobile broadband), WLAN, EV-DO, LTE, LTE-U, and MulteFire.  He served as the Chair of MulteFire Alliance Radio Working Group from 2016-2018 and was the technical lead for 5G shared spectrum and MulteFire (MF) Technologies in Qualcomm Research.

Tamer’s  primary focus has been the delivery of technology from design principals to performance evaluation, prototyping, standardization, and both base-station and terminal chipsets commercialization. A particular area of expertise for Tamer is on Wireless MIMO techniques

Vice President of Engineering

Daaman Hejmadi

XCOM Labs Vice President of Engineering Daaman Hejmadi brings extensive executive leadership and engineering experience to the team. His work has spanned semiconductor startups to device manufacturing giants over the past three decades. He most recently co-founded a startup company building the brain of an autonomous automobile focused on the rapidly growing market in China. Prior to this, Daaman’s most recent tour with Intel began in 2016 culminating in the role of Corporate Vice President & Infrastructure and Platform Solutions Group General Manager propelling the recovery of process technology leadership by creating a development platform for internal and external customers. This was preceded by nine years with Qualcomm in the capacity of Vice President of Engineering revolutionizing their development landscape, transforming their Bangalore design center from a small augmentation team to an engineering powerhouse comprised of ~4K staff that continues to deliver long-term value.  

Daaman holds a Master of Business Administration in Organizational Behavior and Finance from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. He earned his Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science and Engineering) at the Indian Institute of Science preceded by a Bachelor of Science in Physics/Electronics from the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning. 

Vice President of Sales and Business Development

Dev Khoslaa

XCOM Labs Vice President of Sales and Business Development, Dev Khoslaa has over 25 years of experience in building and growing wireless businesses in the telecommunications industry. In his previous role at Nokia, he led go-to-market and business development for private LTE/5G for enterprise and mobile network operators in North America. He led large wireless deals in manufacturing, autonomy, urban real-estate, education, and the public sector through C-suite engagements and strategic partnerships.

Over the course of his career, he has performed several sales leadership and key account management roles in the Americas and international markets. As a GM of a key account, he helped a major network operator launch mobile broadband in the U.S. and grew that account to become one of the largest globally. As VP of Sales, he built and managed mobile networks business for a new market with more than half a billion-dollar revenue and a large international team.

A strong customer advocate, he believes in the power of consultative, solution selling and strategic partnerships to incubate and build new businesses. He has been a keynote speaker and panelist at multiple summits and conferences including Mobile World Congress. He holds an MBA degree and a B.E. in Electronics and Communications degree. Dev has thoroughly enjoyed being part of the huge transformation over the last couple of decades. He is even more excited about the prospects of change that technology can drive in the future. 

Vice President of Human Resources

Mary Stewart

Long-time San Diegan and University of San Diego Summa Cum Laude graduate, Mary Stewart, is now a part of the XCOM Labs team. Having previously spent more than 16 years in Qualcomm HR and ending her tenure there as Vice President of Human Resources, Stewart joins XCOM Labs as Vice President of HR/CHRO.

With an extensive background leading various divisions (e.g., R&D, Legal, Manufacturing, etc.), Stewart has invaluable experience supporting global, fast-paced divisions with multifaceted HR business needs.

In her most recent role at Qualcomm, Stewart was responsible for all Global Shared Services and HR Systems and deployed a new HRIS system and shared service platform to over 40,000 employees. Prior to that, she served as a senior level HR Business Partner supporting Qualcomm’s Global Corporate Research and Development divisions as well as Qualcomm’s legal department.

As the Head of HR at XCOM, she has already begun to expand the organization globally and has put in place HR structures and processes to support that growth for the organization’s fast-paced engineering teams. Mary Stewart is an exemplary model of a versatile and experienced executive in Global Human Resources and HR Operations.

Vice President of Operations

Clif Scott

XCOM Labs Vice President of Operations, Clif Scott, provides day-to-day operational leadership for the company and oversees program management, investor relations, and vendor relations. 

Clif  previously worked for Qualcomm for 21 years and 10 of those years he was a Vice President of Engineering. In that role,  he focused on phone/device development, cellular technology, Wi-Fi, IOT, SaaS, embedded software, autonomous vehicles, and people development. During his career at Qualcomm, Clif was a divisional engineering lead for two of Qualcomm’s divisions, MediaFLO Technologies and OmniTracs. After leaving Qualcomm, Clif joined XCOM Labs in 2018 in a consulting capacity before transitioning to a full-time, in-house role as the Head of Operations. He became Vice President of Operations in 2021.

Clif collaborates closely with XCOM’s engineering leads and together created the company’s software development process (CI/CD) and IT infrastructure. He is well versed in licensing, establishing an open-source management process to ensure XCOM’s compliance with all licenses and working with outside counsel to establish export compliance policies.

During his 35-year career, Clif has held many engineering roles including an embedded real-time software developer, software lead for commercial cell phones, and managing large engineering teams that launched consumer electronics into retail stores. He has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from California State University, Stanislaus.

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