Ronald C. Menendez is a Senior Scientist on the technical staff of the Broadband Access Network Engineering area at Telcordia Technologies. His primary focus is investigating full-service access networks including xDSL systems, HFC, and Fiber-to-the-Curb/Fiber-to-the-Home systems. His recent efforts are focussed on defining the domains of applicability of these architectures and participating in international standards efforts to define a family of next-generation fiber-based access architectures employing ATM and passive optical networks. He has been involved in consulting engagements with all of the original seven RBOCs, with European competitive local access providers, and with members of the network and component supplier community. Before joining Telcordia at the divestiture of the Bell System in 1984, he was on the technical staff of Bell Laboratories where he studied the effects of lightning and electrical power contacts on telephone equipment and human physiological responses to electrical stimuli.

He received a B.S. in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971, and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1973 and 1976, respectively. A member of the IEEE, he has published on a wide range of topics including fiber-based access networks, magnetic levitation of high-speed ground transportation, dielectric waveguiding structures, electromagnetic scattering, and human physiological responses to electrical stimuli. In 1989, he was co-recipient of the William R. Bennett Prize Paper award of the IEEE Communications Society in the field of Communications Circuits and Techniques. In 1993, he was co-author of the paper awarded the ISSLS '93 Best Paper Award in the Operations and Management Theme. He was selected as an individual recipient of a Telcordia CEO Award in 1998.