David E. Liddle

Leader of the development of the groundbreaking Xerox Star computer system, Liddle is credited with establishing the precedent-setting design for graphical user interfaces.

He arrived at Xerox PARC in time to help with the POLOS project and design the display controller for the Alto, then went on to become the project leader for the development of the Star. In 1982 he left Xerox to co-found Metaphor Computer Systems, Inc., serving as its President and CEO until IBM acquired it in 1991. Using the advantages of graphical interaction design for database access and program development applications, he built Metaphor into a successful company. In 1992 Liddle was asked to set up and lead a new research laboratory, Interval Research Corporation, to stir up some new thinking for commercial possibilities. Along with Paul Allen, he assembled a stellar team of researchers, including interaction, graphic, and product designers, and media and behavioral people, as well as computer scientists. Interval Research Corporation was a Palo Alto laboratory and technology incubator for new businesses focusing on broadband, consumer devices, interaction design and advanced technologies and the Internet. Between 1992 and 1999 he served as president and CEO.

Liddle has served as a consulting professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He has served as a Director at Sybase, Broderbund Software, Borland International, and Ticketmaster Group. He chaired the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute from 1994 to 1999. Liddle joined the Board of Directors of The New York Times Company in 2000, and from 2000 has been a partner at U.S. Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm he co-founded.

He has also served on the Boards of privately-held companies Axiom Microdevices, Caspian Networks, Engineered Intelligence, Klocwork, MaXXan, Optichron, PacketHop and T-RAM. Liddle has served on the DARPA Information Science and Technology Committee, and has chaired the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council. In January 2012, he joined the Board of Directors of SRI International, which was founded as Stanford Research Institute, a nonprofit research institute headquartered in Menlo Park, California. He has also served on the board of directors of Inphi Corporation, where his committee memberships included Audit and Technology & Innovation, the latter of which he chaired.

He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in EECS at the University of Toledo.