Rafael Pous

Full Professor & Director of Innovation · Universitat Pompeu Fabra & Keonn Technologies · company speakers →

Rafael Pous obtained dual M.Sc. degrees in Telecommunications Engineering and Computer Science from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain). He later earned an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. His graduate studies were funded by Fulbright and Schlumberger fellowships. During this period, he conducted research on numerical methods in electromagnetics, novel antenna design, and superconductivity applied to communication circuits. He then joined the faculty at UPC, where he taught and led research groups for 16 years. His work resulted in publications on advanced numerical methods in electromagnetics, superconductor-based electro-optical modulators for optical communications, and fractal antennas. He is a co-author of the first patent on fractal antennas, a technology that gave rise to the company Fractus, whose innovations are now present in most mobile phones. During his tenure at UPC, he co-founded two companies. The first, The Information Highway Group, was a key player in the early years of the Internet, developing the software infrastructure for the world’s first online university, as well as some of the earliest online banking platforms, online marketplaces, and e-commerce sites, working with both startups and large corporations. The second company, AIDA Centre, was a pioneer in deploying the UHF RFID technology and standards developed by the Auto-ID Center (later Auto-ID Labs) in commercial applications across logistics, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare. The company led what was at the time the largest deployment of UHF RFID readers, a project for the Spanish Postal Service that was eventually adopted by the Universal Postal Union. He continued his academic career at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain), where he has been a faculty member for the past 17 years. During this time, he gradually shifted his research focus toward RFID, robotics, and the Internet of Things. Just prior to joining UPF, he co-founded Keonn Technologies, a company that develops and supplies RFID-based solutions for the retail industry, including inventory systems (handheld readers, smart shelves, robots, and overhead readers), loss prevention, payment, and customer engagement solutions. Keonn is widely regarded as a world leader in RFID solutions for retail, offering one of the industry’s broadest portfolios and serving customers in more than 60 countries across all continents. The company has achieved the world’s largest deployment of overhead RFID readers for perpetual inventory in terms of number of stores, customers, and geographic reach. Keonn was recently acquired by Novanta, a Nasdaq-listed company based in Boston. As a Full Professor at UPF and Director of Innovation at Keonn, Rafael Pous leads research and innovation initiatives that combine RFID with complementary technologies such as computer vision, RTLS, and AI. His work focuses on developing sensor-fusion solutions that push the limits of data accuracy and fidelity, enabling new use cases that are set to transform the retail industry.

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