Bob Friday is Chief Technology Officer for the Wireless Networking Business Unit, part of Cisco's Network Services Technology Group. He manages strategic wireless initiatives for the fast-growing Wi-Fi (wireless LAN) and WiMAX broadband (wireless WAN) businesses.

Friday's career has been focused on developing unlicensed wireless networking technology and products. He came to Cisco as the Chief Scientist and cofounder of Airespace, the wireless LAN leader acquired by Cisco in 2004. At Airespace, he leveraged his background in the outdoor wireless service provider market to introduce a centralized controller architecture for enterprise 802.11 wireless networks. He was also responsible for location technology, mesh, wireless routing technology, radio hardware development, and radio resource management algorithms.

Prior to Airespace, Friday was Chief Scientist at Metricom, a wireless WAN infrastructure company, and was directly responsible for the performance and capacity of the company's nationwide wireless wide-area Ricochet network.

Friday has been awarded 13 patents. He holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and a master of science degree in electrical engineering from San Jose State University.