Dr. Stelios Patsiokas has become a driving force within the high-tech world of the United States by developing the technology that made satellite radio to fly.

Patsiokas was born in 1953, in Serres, Greece.  He came to the United States in 1971 and entered Wilkes College under a tuition fellowship. After the completion of his Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1975, he entered Virginia Tech where he obtained a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1977. He continued his studies at Virginia Tech, towards a Doctoral Degree in Electrical Engineering, which was completed in September of 1979.

After receiving his doctorate in 1979, he began working at Motorola for almost 20 years. During his tenure with Motorola, he was a major contributor in the areas of radio wave propagation, microcellular system design and the development of the cordless telephone second-generation technology (CT2).  As Director of Product Development for Motorola’s Messaging Systems Product Group, he developed the PageWriter 2000 two-way messaging device, Motorola’s first software centric device.

In 1998, Dr. Patsiokas was hired by XM Satellite radio as senior vice president of engineering. At XM Satellite radio he was initially responsible for the development of the waveform, custom chipsets, receiver hardware reference platforms and antennas. In 2001, he was promoted to executive vice president of engineering where his responsibilities expanded to include the implementation of the overall end-to-end radio link, repeater network radio design and installation, development of data services and the development and manufacturing of all aftermarket XM radio products.

The contributions made by Dr. Patsiokas have enabled Satellite Radio the ability to beam over 150 channels of audio programming to listeners anywhere in the United States.

His work also led the company to be named Fortune Magazine’s Product of the Year; one of Time Magazine’s “Inventions of the Year;” Popular Science’s 2001 “Best of What’s New” in the Electronics category; and “Best of CES” at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show.

Dr. Patsiokas was the recipient of the Washington Immigrant Achievement Award from the American Immigration Law Foundation in March 2002. He was inducted in the Space Technology Hall of Fame the same year.

He holds 35 United States Patents in the area of RF communication systems and wireless devices.