Alumni accomplishments

Examples of notable alumni from the College of Engineering

William C. Leone, Mechanical Engineering (MechE) ’44, ’48, ’52 – Retired Vice Chair, MAXXAM, Inc.

Ivan Sutherland, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) ’59 – Creator of SketchPad, a program considered to be the ancestor of modern computer-aided design programs. Sutherland received a Turing Award and a Kyoto Prize for this pioneering work.

Andrew Jon (AJ) Eggenberger, Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) ’61,’67 – Former chief executive officer, chairman, and board member of the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board. Eggenberger was responsible for external safety oversight of the Department of Energy’s defense nuclear facilities, a role appointed to him by former President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Giorgio Coraluppi, ECE ’66 – Founder and president of Compunetix

William D. Strecker, ECE ’66,’67,’71 – One of the creators of VAX, an iconic set architecture development by Digital Equipment Corporation.

Andy Bechtolsheim, ECE ’76 – Co-founder and former chief hardware designer of Sun Microsystems. More recently, Bechtolsheim is known for being a prominent technology investor.

David M. Kelley, ECE ’76 – Founder of the global design and innovation company IDEO and Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design — commonly referred to as the d.school.

Vinod Khosla, Biomedical Engineering ’78 – Co-founder, former chairman, and chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems. Khosla then went on to form his own venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures.

Raymond T. Betler, ECE ’79 – Retired president and chief executive officer of Wabtec Corporation

Anthony M. DiGioia III, CEE ’79 ’82 – Founder and medical director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Innovation Center and the Bone and Joint Center at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital. DiGioia developed the Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) Methodology and Practice, which is an innovation in the process of care delivery.

Jane Rudolph, ECE ’79 – Principal with Rudolph Consulting Services LLC, which provides strategy and business development professional services to the defense and government IT industries. Rudolph has also held leadership positions at Lockheed Martin, IBM, and Loral Space & Communications. 

Carol Williams, Chemical Engineering (ChemE) ’80 – Former executive vice president of the Dow Chemical Company.

Scott Griffith, MechE ’81 – Chief executive officer of Ford Autonomous Vehicles and Mobility Business at Ford Motor Company. Previously, Griffith held the position of chairman and chief executive officer of Zipcar. Griffith has also held senior level positions at General Catalyst Partners, a leading venture and growth stage investment firm, The Boeing Company, and The Parthenon Group, a business strategy and investment firm.

Candace Matthews, Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) ’81 – Chief reputation officer at Amway. Matthews has also held leadership positions at SoftSheen-Carson, the Coca-Cola Company, the CIBA Vision Corporation, Procter & Gamble, and General Mills.

Jonathan Rothberg, ChemE ’85 – Well-known scientist and entrepreneur who has founded companies such as CuraGen, Ion Torrent, and Butterfly Network. Rothberg holds more than 100 patents. During the pandemic, Rothberg created a startup company to focus on creating a new rapid at-home test for COVID-19.

Barb Samardzich, MechE ’85 – Former vice president and chief operating officer of Ford of Europe.

Daniel Swanson, MechE ’85 – Retired software systems engineer at Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Roger Rosner, ECE ’87 – Vice President of Applications at Apple.

Gloria Chen, ECE ’89 – Chief human resources officer and executive vice president of Employee Experience at Adobe.

Mark Russinovich, ECE ’89, ’94 – Co-founder and former chief software architect of Winternals Software. Russinovich now serves as chief technology officer of Microsoft Azure.

Alex Acero, ECE ’90 – A speech recognition expert who leads the speech team in Siri for Apple. Before joining Apple, he worked at Microsoft Research and managed teams in speech, natural language processing, information retrieval, multimedia, communication, and computer vision.

Anand Iyer, ECE ’90 – Chief strategy officer of Welldoc. Iyer has been instrumental in the development of BlueStar, the first FDA-cleared mobile prescription therapy for adults with type 2 diabetes. Iyer is also the founder and past President of the In-Building Wireless Alliance.

Anirudh Devgan, ECE ’91 ’93 – President of Cadence

Raj Kapoor, MechE ’92 – Co-founder and former chief executive officer of Snapfish. Kapoor currently serves as the chief strategy officer and head of business for self-driving at Lyft.

George Mueller, ECE ’93 – Co-founder and former chief executive officer of Color Kinetics Inc. (formerly Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions, Inc.). More recently, Mueller has founded EcoSense Lighting.

William Lee, ECE, SCS ’94 – Co-founder and managing director of Pilot Growth Equity. Lee has also co-founded companies such as The Theory Center, NextStage LLC, and FirstBest Systems.

Drew Perkins, ECE, MCS ’94 – Co-founder and CEO of Mojo Vision. An entrepreneur, Perkins has also co-founded companies such as Gainspeed, Infinera Corp., OnFiber Communications, and Lightera Networks.

Amit Zavery, INI ’94 – Vice president and head of platform for Google Cloud

Matt Rogers, ECE ’04,’05 – Co-founder and former chief product officer at Nest. Founder of Incite.org, which includes Incite Labs, Incite Ventures, LLC, and Incite Politics.

James Rogers, MSE, BME ’07 – Founder and CEO of Apeel Sciences

Ana Pinczuk, Software Management ’10 – Chief development officer at Anaplan. Pinczuk has also held leadership positions at AT&T, Cisco, Veritas Technologies LLC, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.