Cogent, Inc. Founder Ming Hsieh Joins USC Board of Trustees

LOS ANGELES, April 18, 2007 — Ming Hsieh, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the Board of Directors of Cogent, Inc., has been elected to the USC Board of Trustees.

A billion-dollar enterprise, Cogent supplies biometric identifying devices to governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations around the globe. These products–based on technology that uses sophisticated algorithms to quickly capture and match individuals’ fingerprints, palm prints, faces or irises–have become increasingly valued tools in combating terrorism and identify theft.

Hsieh received the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Mark A. Stevens Distinguished Alumni Award in April 2006. Later that year, he made a gift of $35 million to endow the school’s oldest and largest department, which was renamed the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering in his honor.

“Ming Hsieh brings outstanding experience as an entrepreneur and manager as well as a deep concern about education to the USC Board of Trustees,” said USC President Steven B. Sample. “A true innovator who has challenged himself to meet a real societal need, he has built not only a world-class company, but also a legacy at USC that will benefit future generations of students and researchers. He is an inspiring member of the Trojan Family, and we are fortunate to have a creative thinker of his caliber on our board.”

A self-made businessman, Hsieh was born and raised in China and, because of the Cultural Revolution, was largely educated at home. He developed an interest in technology as a child working alongside his father, who was an electrical engineer. In 1980, after two years of study at the South China Institute of Technology (now known as South China University of Technology), Hsieh followed the recommendation of his uncle, a USC alumnus, and emigrated to the United States to enroll at USC. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1983 and a master’s in 1984, both in electrical engineering.

Although his parents wanted him to stay in school and obtain a Ph.D., Hsieh began his professional career as a circuit designer for Internal Rectifier in 1985. After mastering digital circuit design, he got together with three fellow USC graduates in 1987 and formed his first corporation, AMAX Information Technologies, which specialized in servers, storage systems and related hardware.

In partnership with another USC classmate, Hsieh founded Cogent in 1990. Their goal was to design a fully automated, high-speed system of fingerprint identification, with customized software to match. Within six months, they had secured a contract with the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services to develop a system aimed at preventing welfare fraud. When the company went public in 2004, its 20.7 million-share offering was one of the most successful initial public offerings (IPOs) of the year.

Today, Cogent is one of the top providers of fingerprint-identification systems worldwide. All 47 law-enforcement agencies in Los Angeles County use Cogent products, and the company’s client list includes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well.

BusinessWeek magazine ranked Cogent number one in its “Best Small Companies 2005” issue, and that same year, Hsieh was a national finalist in Computer World’s honors program in the area of business and related services. Hsieh also won Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year Award” for greater Los Angeles in the category of technology and services in 2006.

Contact: James Grant (213) 740-2215 or james.grant@usc.edu

From University of Southern California Media Relations
Los Angeles, Calif.
Tel: (213) 740-2215