Rob Ryan, founder of Ascend Communications and Entrepreneur America, will be honored by Cornell University, Sept. 26 and 27, as Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year for 2002.

The highlight of the weekend's Entrepreneur of the Year celebration at Cornell, during the university's Homecoming Weekend, will be an address by Ryan, free and open to the public, Friday, Sept. 27, at 4 p.m. in the Statler Auditorium.

Other scheduled Entrepreneur of the Year events during the weekend include an award presentation and dinner reception Thursday, Sept. 26, hosted by Cornell President Hunter Rawlings and a luncheon and panel discussion Friday, titled "Technology Transfer at Cornell." For more information about the awards dinner and the luncheon panel, visit the web site http://www.epe.cornell.edu/ or call Cornell's Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise (EPE) Program at 255-9675.

Ryan also will be signing copies of his book, Entrepreneur America: Lessons From Rob Ryan's High-Tech Start-up Boot Camp , Saturday, Sept. 28, at 11 a.m. in the Cornell Campus Store.

A 1969 Cornell alumnus with a bachelor of arts degree, Ryan earned national attention when he grew his 1989 start-up company, Ascend Communications Inc., to more than $500 million in sales by 1995. Lucent Technologies acquired Ascend in 1999 for $23 billion, in what was termed the largest technology merger ever. Back surgery sidelined Ryan from Ascend in June of 1995, but soon after his recovery he reinvented himself as a boot camp mentor at his Montana ranch and began helping budding high-tech entrepreneurs formulate winning business plans and teaching them how to sell their ideas.

"I wanted to give something back, to America, to the fellowship of entrepreneurs, to my community and to Cornell," Ryan said. "I have been lecturing at Cornell and mentoring entrepreneurs from Boston to Silicon Valley with whistle-stops in Chicago and Bozeman, Montana."Since Entrepreneur America began, Ryan has counseled dozens of aspiring entrepreneurs, and as a result 18 companies have been founded and mentored by his organization. Three of those companies rose to billion dollar valuations.

Ryan began his career as a systems analyst with Burroughs, then worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab on the first nonmilitary extension of Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet. In the late '70s, he was the principal architect of DecNet and the Intel portion of the Ethernet specification while working at Digital Equipment Corp. in the Boston area. He founded Softcom Inc. in the early '80s, sold it in two years to Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. and worked there as director of research and development until the late '80s. He is married to his Cornell classmate, Terry Wehe Ryan '69, who played a major role in the start up of Ascend and the founding of Entrepreneur America.

Ryan is a member of the Cornell University Council and its universitywide EPE Advisory Council. He is the visionary behind the Cornell Entrepreneur Network (CEN), a program that brings Cornellians together for networking events in cities across the country and offers a web site

(http://www.cen.cornell.edu) to help alumni connect for career advancement.

The entrepreneur of the year award is given annually to a Cornellian who best exemplifies entrepreneurial achievement, community service and high ethical standards. The past two award winners were Jeffrey Parker '65, M. Eng. '66, MBA '70, founder of First Call and co-founder and chairman/CEO of the Corporate Communications Broadcast Network (CCBN), and Jeff Hawkins '79, inventor of the PalmPilot and co-founder of Handspring Inc. A committee of Cornell alumni, faculty and students reviews the nominations and selects the recipient.

The award was established in 1984 by Cornell's S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management and is now managed by the EPE Program, which was founded in 1992 as a combined initiative of the Johnson School and Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.