The VPR toolset and methodology developed by Dr. Betz have become the standard for FPGA architecture research and the comparison point for CAD optimization quality, and have been used by over 180 companies and 1100 universities. He co- founded Right Track CAD to commercialize this research; after Right Track's aquisition by Altera, he spent 11 years at Altera, ultimately as Senior Director of Software Engineering leading a team of 90 engineers. He is the architect of many features within Altera's Quartus II CAD system, including the placement and routing engine and the power optimization tools, and these tools are used daily by tens of thousands of design engineers worldwide. He is also one of the architects of the Stratix and Cyclone FPGA families, which have cumulative sales approaching $20 billion to date. He holds 70 US patents, and six of his publications are included in the "FPGA20" most influential FPGA Symposium papers. He is the author of one book and two book chapters on programmable logic and CAD.
Dr. Betz completed his PhD(ECE) at the University of Toronto and received both the Governor General's Award for best PhD thesis and the Douglas R. Colton Award for Research Excellence. He received his M.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993, and his B.Sc. (with University Gold Medal) from the University of Manitoba in 1991.