Avram Miller (born January 27, 1945) is an American businessman, corporate venture capitalist, scientist and technologist.
Miller was the founding chair of Plugged In, a non-profit computer literacy program for underserved urban youth (1992-1999), a senior advisor to Equal Access (1999-2012) and a trustee of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) (1998-2002).
Toward the end of 1966, Miller began work at the Langley Porter Institute, University of California San Francisco Medical School, under Joseph Kamiya, PhD, who was a pioneer in the study of biofeedback.
[1] In early 1969, Miller joined cardiologist Paul Hugenholtz, who was starting a new cardiovascular institute at Erasmus University Rotterdam, called The Thoraxcenter.
A year later, Ken Olsen, Digital's founder and CEO, chose Miller to head a new group dedicated to developing the company's entry into the personal computer market.
The Professional 350, introduced at the 1982 National Computer Conference in Houston, TX, ran a multiprocessing operating system, a fully bitmapped display, and had built-in Ethernet capability.
Miller's group was an investor in Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com, internet infrastructure and security services company Verisign, communications semiconductor maker Broadcom, interactive publications innovator LAUNCH Media, the web-hosting service Geocities, the tech media site CNET and broadband network provider Covad (now part of MegaPath Corporation).
In 1992, Miller was asked by Andy Grove to be the Intel point person working with Microsoft to develop a number of consumer initiatives.
[15] Because the cable industry did not have the technical capabilities to manage an internet business, Miller conceived of a company that would provide these services, and convinced the venture group Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB, also known as Kleiner Perkins) to work with the cable industry to create the company @Home Network.
In addition to the development of broadband cable, Miller oversaw Intel's activities to create high-speed DSL (digital subscriber line) Internet access, working extensively with telephone companies.
Miller currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Sheba Hospital in Israel as well as The Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic.