MIKE KAPPES

Soccer

1990 – Warren – Electrical Engineering

A four-year letter winner on the UCSD Men’s Soccer team, Kappes was a starting midfielder on the Tritons’ undefeated 1988 NCAA Division III Championship team. He went to the NCAA Playoffs all four seasons and is still ranked among the top 10 in career assists.

Kappes graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree in 1990 and earned his Masters in Electrical Engineering in1991. He began his professional career while still in school with TRW-LSI, working on advanced data converters for video applications. After a year, he joined Brooktree Corporation, developing video display drivers for CRT monitors. After some eight years and a name change, inspired by colleagues who had done the same, Kappes moved on to a start-up—Innovent—that built Bluetooth radios for cell phones. Within a year, the company was acquired by Broadcom and after a stint with Broadcom, he started his own firm—IQ-Analog (www.iqanalog.com) in January of 2005. Located just a few miles from the UCSD campus, the San Diego firm, of which Kappes is president and founder, is comprised of a small team of advanced technologists working on circuit designs for the next generation of WiMAX and cellular infrastructure equipment.

As an undergraduate, he met his future wife, Felicia Faro, a star on the UCSD Women’s Soccer team, and the two were married in 1994. They now have three children—Kyle (9), Mikayla (7) and Kevin (4). Kappes still plays in an adult soccer league (although he’s currently recovering from a broken leg) and the youngsters are all soccer players as well.