|
|
Silicon Valley Engineering |
|
|
|
From the time he was a Westinghouse Talent Search national finalist and landed a summer job at the General Railway Signal Corporation and began inventing and patenting new products, it was clear that Ted Hoff was destined for the technologist’s life. After graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1958 with BSEE, Hoff entered graduate school at Stanford, and promptly distinguished himself as co-inventor of the LMS Algorithm, a powerful computational technique, still used in virtually every modem and countless other applications.
Ted Hoff earned a doctorate from Stanford stayed on as a research associate until 1968, when he joined the newly launched Intel Corp. One of Silicon Valley’s most dramatic and momentous episodes then commenced. A prospective customer asked Intel to consider designing a set of twelve specialized integrated circuits. Dr. Hoff realized that a general-purpose processor could be built—on a single chip—and that all the specialized functions could be achieved solely by software instructions running on the processor. Intel and the customer agreed, Dr. Hoff led the product through design to production, and the microprocessor —the heart of the personal computer—was born.
Subsequently Dr. Hoff turned to inventing techniques for combining analog and digital functions on low-power, low-cost chips, thus providing the fundamental building blocks for vastly increasing the speed and power of communications networks.
Dr. Hoff has served on advisory and governing bodies of numerous organizations, and he is currently Chief Technologist of Teklicon, Inc., a consulting firm.
Dr. Chang-Lin Tien
late Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley and Pioneer in Heat Transfer
Chang-Lin Tien was University Professor Emeritus for the University of California system and NEC Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at its Berkeley campus. From 1990 to 1997, he served as the seventh Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley — the first Asian American to lead a major U.S. research university.
A world-renowned expert in heat transfer, Dr. Tien was a pioneer in thermal radiation and microscale thermophysical engineering. He authored one book, published more than 300 research articles and served as editor of three international journals. He guided more than 60 students to the doctorate. Among his numerous honors, Dr. Tien was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was recipient of the 2001 Founder’s Award from the National Academy of Engineering and held 12 honorary doctorates from universities in the United States and abroad.
A leader in both domestic and international arenas, Dr. Tien served as Chairman of the Asia Foundation, Chairman of the San Francisco Bay Area Economic Forum, and Chairman of the Chief Executive’s Commission on Innovation and Technology in Hong Kong. He was an active member of many organizations including the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. National Science Board. He also served on many corporate boards including Wells Fargo Bank and Kaiser Permanente.
Dr. Tien was born in Wuhan, China, July 24, 1935, and received his bachelor’s degree from the National Taiwan University. He came to the U.S. in 1956, earned a master’s degree at the University of Louisville in 1957 and then earned a M.A. and Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1959. He died October 29, 2002 at the age of 67. In his honor, the Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies is being planned at U.C. Berkeley.
Mr. Steven G. Wozniak
Inventor of Apple Computers and Founder, Chairman & CEO of Wheels of Zeus
A Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist for the past three decades, Steve Wozniak, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Wheels of Zeus (wOz), helped shape the computing industry with his design of Apple’s first line of products the Apple I and II and influenced the popular Macintosh. For his achievements at Apple Computer, Mr. Wozniak was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States in 1985, the highest honor bestowed America’s leading innovators.
In 2000 Mr. Wozniak was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and was awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment for “single-handedly designing the first personal computer and for then redirecting his lifelong passion for mathematics and electronics toward lighting the fires of excitement for education in grade school students and their teachers. ”
Making significant investments of both his time and resources in education, Mr. Wozniak “adopted” the Los Gatos School District, providing students and teachers with hands-on teaching and donations of state-of-the-art technology equipment. Mr. Wozniak founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was the founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose.
Mr. Wozniak is currently a member of the board of directors for Jacent, a developer of cost-effective telephony solutions, and Danger, Inc., developer of a end-to-end wireless Internet platform.