Pat Thaler is an American electrical engineer recognized for her contributions to the development of

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

and leadership within the

IEEE 802 IEEE 802 is a family of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards for local area networks (LANs), personal area networks (PANs), and metropolitan area networks (MANs). The IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee (LMSC) main ...

standards community. She has been instrumental in advancing several networking standards, including

StarLAN StarLAN was the first IEEE 802.3 standard for Ethernet over twisted pair wiring. It was standardized by the IEEE Standards Association as 802.3e in 1986, as the 1BASE5 version of Ethernet. The StarLAN Task Force was chaired by Bob Galin. Descripti ...

10BASE-T 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...

, and 100VG-AnyLAN.

Early life and education

Thaler was born in

Utica, New York Utica () is the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The tenth-most populous city in New York, its population was 65,283 in the 2020 census. It is located on the Mohawk River in the Mohawk Valley at the foot of the Adiro ...

. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

in 1974 and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1978.

Career

Thaler began her career at

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, where she worked on machines for the manufacture of magnetic disks. She joined

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

in 1976, initially working on the HP 8660 signal synthesizer and later on computer interface card hardware design. She became a principal engineer for LAN architecture and standards at HP’s Roseville Networks Division. Her work included development of Ethernet network interface cards, repeaters, and 10BASE-T transceivers. Thaler was an early contributor to

, a pioneering standard for Ethernet over twisted pair wiring, which laid the groundwork for future Ethernet technologies. Thaler has also worked at

Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American global company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for laboratories. Agilent was established in 1999 as a spin-off from Hewlett-Packar ...

and

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

IEEE and standards contributions

Thaler has served in several

leadership roles. She chaired the IEE 802.3 committee and the 10BASE-T working group, which standardized Ethernet over unshielded twisted pair cabling, making Ethernet feasible for office environments. She also chaired the IEEE 802.12 working group, contributing to standards that included support for full duplex, redundancy, and gigabit-class enhancements. She played a leading role in the architecture and standards development of 100VG-AnyLAN, a protocol that aimed to provide deterministic Ethernet performance over Category 5 cabling. She was later made a vice-chair of IEEE 802. She is credited with a patent related to encoding techniques for 100VG-AnyLAN and has been a contributor to repeater and physical-layer standards in Ethernet. She also served as liaison between IEEE 802 and the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

(IETF) and co-authored RFC 7241, which outlines the collaborative relationship between the two organizations.

Professional bodies and recognition

Thaler is a senior member of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

and the

Society of Women Engineers The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is an international not-for-profit educational and service organization. Founded in 1950 and headquartered in the United States, the Society of Women Engineers is a major advocate for women in engineering and ...

Personal life

Thaler had married and had three sons as of 1995. Outside of her professional work, she has participated in amateur radio civil emergency service.

References