Alumni Profiles

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Jen-Hsun Huang (MS '92 Electrical Engineering)

October 2010. The new Huang Engineering Center is named for alumnus and NVIDIA co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang, who, together with his wife Lori, made the building possible. Born in Taipei, Jen-Hsun immigrated to the United States at age 10. In high school, he discovered the magic of...

Mae Jemison (BS '77 ChemE)

June 2010. Just before Dr. Mae Jemison took the podium at the Department of Chemical Engineering’s 50th Anniversary dinner May 11, Stanford Engineering Dean Jim Plummer described her as “T-shaped.”

It was not a reference to her Texas residency, or a play on the signature NASA “T-...

Lew Terman (BS '56, MS '58, PhD '61 EE)

April 2010. On a business trip to Japan in the late 1970s, IBM researcher Lew Terman once again found himself being introduced to people because of his famous last name. He is, after all, the son of Fred Terman, whom many people consider the ‘father of Silicon Valley’, But...

Sam Mazin (MS '04, PhD '07)

February 2010. Sam Mazin (MS 2004 EE, PhD 2007 EE) is a man with a promising idea. When he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship last year from the Kauffman Foundation he got the chance to spend this year developing it full time.

A postdoc in the medical school, Mazin hopes to...

Kristina Johnson (BS '81, MS '81, PhD '84)

December 2009. Kristina Johnson earned all three of her electrical engineering degrees at Stanford (BS 1981, MS 1981, PhD 1984), and it would be an understatement to say that she’s put that education to good use. After serving as a professor at the University of Colorado, and as dean of...

FriendFeed

October 2009. How did three Stanford computer science alumni and a friend make a huge mark on the world of social networking? With social networking, of course. The story of the founding of FriendFeed, an influential social information sharing site acquired in August for a rumored $47.5...

Cammy Abernathy (PhD 1985, MS 1982 MSE)

August 2009. Cammy Abernathy has researched compound semiconductors for years, and what’s true in those materials is also true in engineering at large: individuals accomplish more when they team up with others.

Now that Abernathy is the dean of the University of Florida’s College...

Craig Barrett (BS 1961, MS 1963, PhD 1965, MSE)

May 2009. As Chairman and former CEO of Intel, Craig Barrett (BS 1961, MS 1963, PhD 1965, MSE) is one of the best known names in the technology business.

Back in 1974 as a young associate professor of materials science and engineering, Barrett decided to leave academia to join...

Clara Shih (MS 2005 CS)

April 2009. Clara Shih (BS CS/Economics, MS 2005 CS) doesn't just enjoy social networking, she is helping shape it. In 2007, Shih developed Faceconnector, the first business application on Facebook. Today, she helps businesses tap their customer and employee networks in her work as director of...

Mark Pinto (PhD 1990 EE, MS 1983 EE)

The most recent recognition of Mark Pinto’s impact on semiconductor manufacturing came in December 2008 when he won the J.J. Ebers Award from the Electron Devices Society of the IEEE. The award recognized his “contributions to widely applied semiconductor technology simulation tools.”

But...

Sandra Begay-Campbell (MS 1991 CE)

In a country where almost everyone has electric power, or at least access to it, it is easy to forget that nearly 20,000 households don't. Sandra Begay-Campbell is tackling the problem every day in her job. Begay-Campbell (MS 1991 CE) is a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia...

Carlos Guestrin (PhD 2003 CS)

December 2008. If you need to monitor something big and complex with a tight budget of money, electrical power, or some other resource, Carlos Guestrin (PhD 2003 CS) knows just what to do. The Carnegie Mellon computer science assistant professor blends machine learning and optimization...

Judy Estrin (MS 1977 EE)

Judy Estrin (MS 1977 EE) is well known in Silicon Valley and business circles as an innovator and entrepreneur, having founded multiple companies in the data networking field and having served as the CTO of networking giant Cisco Systems and on the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company...

Kirk Hawkins (MS 1995 Eng)

September 2008. A 2004 regulatory change by the Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA)that created an entirely new Light Sport Aircraft category and new Sport Pilot License was a dream come true for Kirk Hawkins (MS 1995 Eng, MS 2005 Business). Hawkins is a man passionate about...

Ross Evans (BS 1999 ME)

Ross Evans (BS 1999 ME) likes making things that solve problems and so he became a rather prolific and diverse inventor when he was an undergraduate in the product design program at Stanford. Among his brainchildren were an underwater breathing system for capsized kayakers, a kids fort-building...

Jorge Cham (PhD 2003 ME)

For more than 10 years, "Piled Higher and Deeper," a comic strip created by Jorge Cham (PhD 2003 ME), has helped graduate students to realize that they are not alone in the stresses and ironies of their lives. Anyone who has been up all night grading exams, or who has struggled to obtain...

Ben Wildman-Tobriner (BS 2007 Biomechanical Eng.)

June 2008. Ben Wildman-Tobriner (BS 2007 Biomechanical Eng.) is one of the best swimmers in Stanford history and has earned three gold medals in two events at the last two World Championships (the 50m sprint and 400m freestyle relay). He almost undoubtedly is the only alumnus of the...

Hervé Lebret (MS 1990 EE)

Stanford kindled Hervé Lebret’s (MS 1990 EE) love of entrepreneurship, a passion that he took back home with him to Europe after studying here. He wants to see more a more entrepreneurial culture there and is working in more than one way to effect that change. After he earned his EE PhD in...

Keith Comeaux (MS 1991, PhD 1995 AA)

April 2008. Two years ago, Keith Comeaux (MS 1991, PhD 1995 AA) got a call from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with an offer he couldn’t refuse: come work on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), a next-generation rover headed to the “Red Planet” in 2010.

Comeaux is lead...

Nick Baxter (BS Math 1979, MS CS 1980)

March 2008. Nick Baxter (BS 1979 Math, MS 1980 CS) is a software product manager by profession, but his real passion is puzzles. It’s not just a matter of rushing out to get the Sunday paper with a sharpened pencil. He has been at the pinnacle of the international competitive puzzle...

Keith Hippely (BS 1980 ME)

February 2008. Keith Hippely (BS 1980 ME) has always considered himself to be a “car guy,” and figured his mechanical engineering design degree would be a ticket to a car company. He was right, kind of. For nearly 30 years, he’s worked for Mattel and its Hot Wheels division, coming up...

Kim Goodman (BA 1987 Poli Sci, MS 1987 IE)

January 2008. Most people probably don’t think deeply about their credit cards. They are just pieces of plastic that provide a shopping convenience. But Kim Goodman (BA 1987 Poli Sci, MS 1987 IE) is not most people. In September 2007 she joined American Express as an Executive Vice...

Chris Poland (MS 1974 CEE)

December 2007. Chris Poland (MS 1974 CEE) is the CEO of Degenkolb Engineers, a 150-employee firm that specializes in earthquake work. Among the firm’s credits are the restoration of three buildings on campus after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake.

But Poland is much more than a guy...

Paul Kaminski (PhD 1971 AA)

November 2007. For the last several decades, the U.S. military has had the decidedly useful advantages of seeing more and being seen less than its foes thanks to advanced reconnaissance and stealth technologies. Paul Kaminski (PhD 1971 AA) has been deeply involved in making those...

Ken Stinson (MS 1970 CEE)

October 2007. In 1969, Ken Stinson (MS 1970 CEE) was a Stanford graduate student in need of a summer job. He signed on for an internship with the construction company Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc. which was building a portion of San Francisco’s BART subway system. Today, he is the chairman...

Corazon PB. Claudio (MS 1982, PhD 1987 EES)

September 2007. Sustainable development and growth is a global issue, but in her actions and her advocacy Corazon PB. Claudio (MS 1982, PhD 1987 EES) emphasizes that it starts from an individual mindset. Her work, in partnership with others, has initiated the establishment of...

John Smithson (BS 2005 ME)

July 2007. You’d expect the environment and terrorism to get a lot of play in the newspaper, but how about in a building blueprint? Well, when the U.S. State Department builds an embassy or a consulate these days, its engineers pay heed to both concerns, adopting new technologies and...

Martha Mecartney (PhD 1984 MSE)

June 2007. Martha Mecartney (PhD 1984 MSE) is just about the most popular and visible professor at the University of California, Irvine. In fact, she is the current chair of the Academic Senate and last year was named the campus’ Professor of the Year for her superlative (and unorthodox...

John Hines (MS 1975 EE)

May 2007. John Hines (MS 1975 EE) is quick to point out what would seem to be incredibly obvious: that life on Earth is accustomed to being on Earth. As the Small Spacecraft Division deputy chief and Astrobionics Integrated Program/project team leader at NASA’s Ames Center in Mountain...

Don McMillan (MS 1982 EE)

April 2007. As a professional engineer turned professional comedian, Don McMillan (MS 1982 EE) is pretty much one of a kind. A lot of people use PowerPoint, but only McMillan’s slides are intentionally funny (samples are at...

Frederick Heyler (BAS 1988 CEE, MS 1989 CEE)

March 2007. There is a lot of hand-wringing about science education in U.S. schools, but not in the classrooms of Iolani School in Honolulu. There the students are eager to learn and teacher and science department chair Frederick Heyler (BAS 1988 CEE, MS 1989 CEE) is happy to teach....

Dave Lyons (MS 1990 ME, MBA 2001)

The Tesla Roadster, a new electric car designed for power and performance, is impressive enough that Time Magazine named it one of the best inventions of 2006. The company that makes it, Tesla Motors, is headquartered in San Carlos, Calif., less than 15 miles from campus.

Dave Lyons (MS...

Martin Fisher (MS 1980 ME, PhD 1985 ME)

January 2007. Martin Fisher (MS 1980 ME, PhD 1985 ME) has spent two decades working in Africa to help people climb out of poverty. KickStart identifies entrepreneurial opportunities, develops low-cost, locally attuned, money-making technologies, develops a manufacturing and distribution...

Mark Pigott (BS IE '76, MS Business '84, BA Humanities '98)

December 2006. Mark Pigott (BS IE '76, MS Business '84, BA Humanities '98) is a philanthropist, a technologist, and chairman/CEO of PACCAR Inc In any of these roles, he is an enthusiast who takes great pride in pursuing new possibilities for improving the organizations in which he has...

Marcian “Ted” Hoff (PhD '62 EE)

Marcian “Ted” Hoff (PhD '62 EE), is best known as the architect of the first microprocessor. Intel’s 4004 was released in November 1971, 35 years ago this month. The history that his ingenuity helped spawn is now the subject of a new DVD, the Microprocessor Chronicles.

Hoff came to...

Mary Ellen Nordyke-Grace (BA ’75 French, BS ’77 CEE)

October 2006. When Mary Ellen Nordyke-Grace (BA ’75 French, BS ’77 CEE) goes to work at Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc. (HECO), and for its subsidiary Renewable Hawaii, Inc., she puts her considerable and broad education to use. In striving to jump-start renewable energy...

Sommer Gentry (BS Math And Computational Science, MS EES & OR 1998)

September 2006. Sommer Gentry (BS Math and Computational Science, MS EES & OR 1998), an applied mathematics professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, has been interested in applying optimization to scientific and medical problems since she was a student at Stanford. It wasn’t until she...

Richard Barror (MS 1975 CEE)

August 2006. In December 2005, the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services swore in Rear Admiral Richard Barror (MS 1975 CEE) as the chief engineer of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The corps is one of the federal government’s seven uniformed services and has an...

Adam Lowry (BS '96 ChemE)

July 2006. Adam Lowry (BS ‘96 ChemE) is the co-founder and vice president of Method, a fast-growing startup company in a very mature industry: household cleaning products. Lowry and Eric Ryan, who were high school buddies, founded the company in 2000 with the belief that they could...

Phil Engelauf (MS ‘81 AA)

June 2006. Phil Engelauf (MS ‘81 AA) is the chief of the flight directors at NASA, meaning that the people on the ground responsible for directing space shuttle and International Space Station missions report to him. If you haven’t already, you can see the job depicted in Ed...

Karin Carter (MS 2002 ENG: Product Design)

Karin Carter (MS '02 ENG: Product Design) is a materials designer on the Advanced Innovation Team in Nike’s apparel division near Portland, Ore. Her job is to look around the world for materials and to conceive of how they could make cool products, either because they offer a performance benefit...

Eric Rossetter (MS 2000, PHD 2003 ME)

April 2006. Eric Rossetter (MS 2000, PHD 2003 ME) is a wreck detective. At the San Francisco firm, Principia, he and his colleagues use mechanical engineering and physics principles to determine from sometimes scanty evidence, how a car accident really happened. Think of his job as “CSI...

Alvy Ray Smith (MS 1966, PhD 1970 EE)

March 2006. When the National Academy of Engineering elected Alvy Ray Smith (MS 1966, PhD 1970 EE) as a member in February 2006, they did it at a particularly newsworthy time. He was the co-founder of Pixar, along with business partner Ed Catmull, and Disney and Pixar had just announced...

Charmin Smith (BS 1997, MS 2000 CEE)

February 2006. The Stanford women’s basketball team has had some great years recently and Charmin Smith (BS 1997, MS 2000 CEE) has been there for many of them. As a player (1994-1997) she appeared in three Final Four rounds of the NCAA Tournament. For the past two years, she has been an...

Douglas R. King (BS '70 Eng)

Douglas R. King (BS '70 Eng) is president and CEO of the St. Louis Science Center, one of the nation’s biggest science museums. More than a million visitors come to the free museum each year to learn about life sciences, aviation, and other topics in science and technology.

Inspired by...

Jim Ruddell (BS 1977 CEE)

December 2005. Jim Ruddell (BS 1977 CEE) is the construction manager for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project, which will carry Interstate 95 and I-495 traffic across the Potomac River just south of Washington DC. When both directions are open in 2008, it will provide more than double the...

Peter Mondavi Jr. (BS ’80 ME, MS ’82 IEEM, MBA ’93)

November 2005. There is no name in California winemaking more steeped in tradition than “Mondavi,” yet at the Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena, Calif., co-proprietor Peter Mondavi Jr. (BS ’80 ME, MS ’82 IEEM, MBA ’93) is not resting on any laurels. Under...

Parham Aarabi (PhD '01 EE)

October 2005. Parham Aarabi (PhD 2001 EE ) has been interested in connecting computers to the physical world since he was 11. He now directs the Artificial Perception Lab at the University of Toronto where he is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. His research...

Minoru “Sam” Araki (BS ’54, MS ’55)

September 2005. Mechanical Engineer Minoru “Sam” Araki (BS ’54, MS ’55) graduated from Stanford at a time when the Cold War was rapidly heating up. He quickly found himself helping lead a project to develop the nation’s first spy satellite, named Corona....