Dr. Tran, a professor in the practice at Rice University in Houston, Texas, earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984 and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Houston in 2001.

In addition to being a professor at Rice where he is teaching high-speed systems design, Tran is a senior principal SI/PI engineer at Raytheon Technologies. Prior to Raytheon, he was an engineering technologist at Dell Technologies and Compaq Computer Corporation (acquired by HP), a chief technical advisor at Halliburton Co. and a CTO/senior engineering manager of New Emerging End Equipment in DSP Systems at Texas Instruments. Tran had also been involved with 4 technology startups, one of which was based on his doctoral research in spread spectrum clock distribution methods.

Tran holds 40 granted patents related to high-speed interconnects, computer power management, virtual reality, computer gaming/audio systems, PC-Based HDTV, oil and gas high bitrate telemetry systems, fiber optic communication and mixed analog/digital ASICs. He is a senior Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) member, has written two books and published more than 24 technical papers.

Tran is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including 2022 Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE) Career Achievement Award, three Raytheon Achievement/Innovators Awards, Bronze Excellent@Dell Award, Texas Instruments Patent Hall of Fame, Halliburton MVP and Outstanding Contributions to Innovation and Technology Awards, Compaq Computer Cumulative Patent Award and the first Entrepreneur/Innovation Award from the University of Houston.