Elmer C. Kubie

Co-founder of Computer Usage Company (CUC), the first independent company to market computer software, Kubie helped transform how software was developed and sold. He and John W. Sheldon founded CUC (1955–1986), sometimes...

Tim Westergren

Founder and CEO of Pandora, Westergren started the Music Genome Project, a mathematical algorithm to organize music. The idea was marketed by Pandora Media. Westergren, along with the other developers, patented the...

Srini Devadas

Co-inventor of silicon Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and co-founder of Verayo, a company focused on improving the security of computer hardware, Devadas has served as the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical...

Ahti Heinla

Co-developer of Skype, Heinla is an Estonian programmer and entrepreneur who served as Lead Architect on the project alongside Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn. They had also originally developed Kazaa, which started...

Alan Cooper

Inventor of Visual Basic, Cooper is sometimes called "the father of Visual Basic," although much of the work on Visual Basic was done by Microsoft's internal development group. Cooper was the leading...

Michael Stern Hart

Inventor of the electronic book (or e-book) and founder of Project Gutenberg, Hart made e-books freely available via the Internet. An American author and inventor, he attended the University of Illinois, graduating...

Aaron Marcus

Pioneer in computer-based design, Marcus founded Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A) in 1982, one of the first independent, computer-based design firms in the world. An American user-interface and information-visualization designer, as well...

Scott Cook

Founder of Intuit, Cook launched the financial software company in 1983; it today offers software and online products to help individuals and small companies manage their finances. He started his career at Procter...

Jeffery D. Stein

Jeffery D. Stein has spent six decades building technology businesses. A serial entrepreneur since 1960, he founded and led On-Line Business Systems, Inc. of San Francisco, a pioneer in online real-time transaction...

Frank Moss

Involved in advanced development projects in the areas of networking and distributed computing, Moss is a researcher, technology and biotechnology entrepreneur, academician, and author born in Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended the...

Diane B. Greene

Co-founder and former CEO of VMware, Greene led the company through an IPO and to a $2B run-rate. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Annapolis, Md. She received her...

Morris Chang

Founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Chang is sometimes called the father of Taiwan's chip industry. TSMC pioneered the "dedicated silicon foundry" industry and became the largest silicon foundry in the...

Robert (Bob) C. Baron

Program Manager for the Mariner II (Venus) and the Mariner IV (Mars) onboard space computers, Baron spent over 25 years as an engineer, entrepreneur, and executive in the computer industry. A historian,...

Peter James Denning

Pioneer of virtual memory systems and co-founder of CSNET, Denning is best known for discovering the locality principle and designing the working set model for program behavior. He took an early interest in...

John Theurer Diebold

An early champion of widespread use of computing and automated technology, Diebold helped shape how businesses understood and adopted automation. Diebold was born in Weehawken, New Jersey. He graduated from Swarthmore College in...

Megan Smith

Named in 2014 as the third U.S. Chief Technology Officer and the first woman to hold that position, Smith served as Assistant to the President under Barack Obama until January 2017, succeeding...

Suhas S. Patil

Pioneer in applying computer architecture knowledge to VLSI design, Patil founded Cirrus Logic, a fabless semiconductor company. Over the years, his work covered computer architecture, parallel processing computers, mathematics for computer science,...

William (Bill) David Mensch, Jr.,

A central person in the creation of the Motorola 6800 and MOS Technology 6502 families of microprocessor chips, Mensch is also recognized as the sole IC design engineer of the 6820/21 PIA,...

Derek Gehl

Internet marketing strategist, software developer, and e-commerce columnist and seminar speaker, Gehl has been a featured contributor to a number of industry publications, including Entrepreneur Magazine, MSNBC Small Business, and AOL Small...

Steve McConnell

Named one of the three most influential people in the software industry by Software Development Magazine in 1998, alongside Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds, McConnell has worked on the TrueType project under...