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Home / Alumni

Alumni

Startup Founders, Fortune 500 CEOs and Wildcats for Life

UA Electrical and Computer Engineering graduates transformed the semiconductor, energy and defense industries in the 20th century. Now alumni are pioneering cloud data storage and security, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence.

Whether your college years involved writing code for room-size analog computers in the Old Engineering Building, designing nanoantennas for biomedical devices in an ECE lab, or operating self-driving cars outside Old Main, you are a valued member of the department’s vast network of accomplished and influential alumni.

You are executives at Microsoft, Intel and Cisco and program managers at Lockheed Martin, Texas Instruments and NASA. You are inventors and entrepreneurs whose startups have spurred economic growth in Arizona, the Silicon Valley and beyond. And you are researchers, professors and administrators guiding students at major universities.

Thank you for your contributions to the department, college, university, industry, and indeed, to the world.

 

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Alumni Highlights

Making the Top 1 Percent

Cisco chief technology officer Salman Asadullah, BS 1995, traveled from South Asia to study at the UA and earned his undergraduate degree in three years, despite personal and financial hardships. Now he is among the less than 1 percent of Cisco Systems engineers holding the title of distinguished engineer.

I’ve witnessed the dramatic shifts in the networking industry in real time, and I’m here to tell you: Software leads the world.

Standing Against Corruption

Alan Boeckmann, BS 1973, joined Fluor Corp. just after college and rose to chairman and CEO of the global engineering and construction firm before retiring in 2012. His influence continues as a board member for British Petroleum, Archer Daniels Midland and Sempra Energy. Renowned for his leadership in combating corruption in global commerce, he was UA Engineering’s 2017 Alumnus of the Year.

This is an issue that I'm absolutely passionate about. Corruption has a corrosive impact on market opportunities and the general business climate.

Putting on a Good Show

Phillip Toussaint, BS 2010, plays a big role behind the scenes. He works for Las Vegas-based Stage Technologies making magic for Cirque du Soleil’s acrobatic performances, pop singer Pink’s gravity-defying shows, and many others. The code he writes moves props and equipment for some of the most extravagant shows on earth.

Nowadays you just don’t imagine doing anything without very complex, computer-controlled equipment. It's not human-operated; it's human-supervised.

Paying Technology Forward

Teri Spencer, BS 1987, is founder, president and CEO of Ephibian, which has grown from a few people in a garage to a global company providing infrastructure, application development and managed services for Fortune 1000s and startups. She has won numerous awards and is known for developing the venture technology model.

Ephibian provides technology services in exchange for equity, and we also help those clients raise additional funding as needed.

Inspiring Decades of Students

Paul R. Gray, BS 1963, MS 1965 and PHD 1969, worked on analog integrated circuits in the early days of Silicon Valley before joining the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. At Berkeley, he climbed the ladder from professor to chair of electrical engineering and computer sciences, dean of engineering and executive vice chancellor and provost.

In the late 1960s there were three laboratories in the United States in university settings that had the ability to fabricate an integrated circuit. One was the University of Arizona.

Starting, Selling and Starting Companies

Sunil Kishen, MS 1991, came to the UA from his homeland in India. Now he works in Silicon Valley transferring vast quantities of proprietary information for clients from their networks to the cloud. After his Sheer Networks startup was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2005, he held leadership posts there and at Intel before starting Aviatrix Systems in 2015.

I feel I started my life in Tucson, and I could not have had a better landing in America.

Catalyzing Regional Biotech Growth

Patrick Marcus, BS 1996, whose sculptures featuring solar-powered light decorate the country, harnessed the power of his UA undergraduate degree and 2006 PhD in biomedical engineering to found a Tucson-based startup that makes medical devices. Named Tucson’s Man of the Year in 2014, Marcus works tirelessly with business and academic groups to support other entrepreneurs.

Local startups must build relationships with engineering students early on. We can’t afford not to be closely involved with the University.

Pioneering Microprocessor Design

Bill Mensch, BS 1971, has been a major contributor to the designs of microprocessors used by Motorola, Apple, Atari and Nintendo. He holds 22 patents for microprocessors, microprocessor peripheral devices and microprocessor systems. One of Embedded Computing Design’s 2017 Top Embedded Innovators, he founded Western Design Center in 1978 and helped establish the fabless semiconductor business model.

The world embraced that model, which has allowed for the expansion of more markets, more rapidly, and with a much wider range of uses.
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Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
1230 E. Speedway Blvd.
P.O. Box 210104
Tucson, AZ 85721-0104
520.621.6193

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