Bruin Engineer and Tech Leader Fang Lu Named UCLA Samueli’s 2025 Alumnus of the Year, the School’s Highest Honor

Fang Lu M.S. ’88, Engr. ’89, Ph.D. ’92 is a fellow and longtime technical director at Broadcom Inc., where he designs algorithms and architectures for digital signal processing and high-speed integrated circuits. Lu joined the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering in 1986 as a graduate student, earning his master’s, Engineer and doctoral degrees.

Before his graduate studies, Lu received his bachelor’s in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University and taught electronics in the Taiwan Army Missile Corps for two years as an Officer of Honor. At UCLA, he was advised by Henry Samueli, a professor who later became his boss at Broadcom. He authored more than 20 papers and received the 1991-1992 Predoctoral Fellowship Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Solid-State Circuits Council.

After UCLA, Lu became one of the first two full-time employees of Broadcom Corporation co-founded by Samueli. Now known as Broadcom Inc., the startup evolved into a global leader in semiconductor and software development. As technical director, Lu has been instrumental to the company’s major scientific achievements. In 1998, he led the team that developed the world’s first single-chip, cable-modem headend receiver, a device that processes TV and internet signals for distribution to subscribers. He also oversaw the development of six generations of cable-modem headend transceiver integrated circuits, now used in most U.S. residential broadband systems.

Lu has been a member of IEEE since 1993 and served on the Technical Program Committee of IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference from 1994 to 1999. He is the inventor or co-inventor of more than 45 issued and pending patents.

Over the years, Lu has continued to support UCLA Samueli, establishing two graduate student fellowships and an optics and quantum electronics research laboratory. He has also endowed a faculty chair and given a gift of $1 million to set up research funds in the Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering departments.