Some selected alumni who have changed the world:
Donald L. Bitzer (BS 1955, MS 1956, PhD 1960, Electrical Engineering) and colleagues developed PLATO, the first computer-based interactive educational network and home of the first online community. The flat-panel plasma monitor, a forerunner of today's high-definition flat-panel television monitors, was a spin-off invention made by researchers working on PLATO.
Alfred Cho (BS 1960, MS 1961, PhD 1968, Electrical Engineering) is considered "the father of molecular beam epitaxy," a process in which materials are layered atop one another--atom-by-atom within a vacuum--with great precision to form devices like transistors and light-emitting diodes, or lasers. The switches in cell phones that carry our conversations over radio frequencies are made using molecular beam epitaxy, as are most of the lasers used in CD/DVD players and drives.
Dale A. Gardner (BS, Engineering Physics) became the first Illini in space as the commander of the space shuttle Challenger’s September 30-October 5, 1983, mission.
Nick Holonyak, Jr. (BS 1950, MS 1951, PhD 1954, Electrical Engineering) developed the quantum well laser, making possible lasers for fiber-optic communications and the Internet, CDs, DVDs, medical diagnosis, surgery, ophthalmology, and many other applications. Holonyak, the John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois, also invented the first practical light emitting diode, in addition to the body of work on transistor and laser electronics generated over the span of his career (55+ years).
Jawed Karim (BS 2004, Computer Science) was one of PayPal's first developers; in 2005, he co-founded YouTube with two friends.
Jack S. Kilby (BS 1947, Electrical Engineering) was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at Texas Instruments. He held more than 60 patents and is credited as co-inventor of the hand-held calculator and the thermal printer used in portable data terminals.
Seichi Konzo (MS 1929, Mechanical Engineering) designed the first air-conditioned house in the world--at 1108 West Stoughton Street, Urbana--and moved his family in to test it.
Polykarp Kusch (MS 1933, PhD 1936, Physics) shared the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work toward the precise measurement of the magnetic moment of the electron.
Max Levchin (BS 1997, Computer Science) co-founded PayPal (with Peter Thiel) and served as its chief technology officer. PayPal began as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company, and now enables anyone with an email address to make and receive online payments quickly and securely. In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal, which had also employed a number of U of I computer science alumni, including YouTube co-founders Jawed Karim and Steve Chen.
Robert H. Liebeck (BS 1961, MS 1962, PhD 1968, Aerospace Engineering) attained world recognition for his novel designs of high-lift airfoils, referred to by the aeronautics community as the "Liebeck airfoils." He is co-developer of the blended-wing-body (BWB), a revolutionary airframe design for subsonic transports which is widely considered a major innovation in subsonic commercial transportation.
Ray Ozzie (BS 1979, Computer Science) created and led the development of Lotus Notes, the defining groupware product used by more than 100 million people worldwide. In April 2005, he became a chief technical officer at Microsoft, which acquired Groove Networks, Inc., the company he founded in 1997. Groove Networks offers virtual office software that allows teams of people to work together over the network as if they were in the same room. Ozzie was first exposed to the nature and significance of collaborative systems and computer-supported cooperative work while working on the university's PLATO project as an undergraduate.
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (MS 1942, PhD 1945, Physics) shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for the discovery and development of radioimmunoassay, a technique that employs radioactive isotopes to detect and measure the levels of insulin and hormones in the blood and in body tissues.
