Engineers receive prestigious university alumni awards

Larry F. Altenbaumer (BSEE ’70), Edward S. Davidson (PhD ’68), Daniel W. Dobberpuhl (BSEE ’67), Oscar L. Gaddy (PhD ’62), Mark Shepherd Jr. (MSEE ’47), and William A. Wulf (MSEE ’63) received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at a banquet on Friday, September 19 in Champaign. Established 33 years ago, this award recognizes ECE alumni who have made professional and technical contributions that bring distinction to the department and the university.

Altenbaumer is president and CEO of Illinois Power in Decatur, IL, and executive vice president of regulated energy delivery for Dynegy Inc. He was recognized for his leadership in the electric power industry, his community involvement, and service to the University of Illinois. Altenbaumer was a member of the ECE Alumni Board from 1988 to 2001, serving as president from 1995 to 1998. He received the Orange and Blue Appreciation Award in 2002 for his loyal and dedicated service to the ECE Alumni Association.

A professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, Davidson was honored for his contributions to the design of high-performance computers and the establishment of computer engineering as an academic discipline. His research interests included computer architecture, parallel and pipeline processing, performance modeling, intelligent caches, supercomputing, and application code assessment and tuning. With his graduate students, he developed the reservation table approach to optimum design and cyclic scheduling of pipelines, designed and implemented an eight-microprocessor SMP system in 1976, and developed a variety of systematic methods for computer performance evaluation and enhancement.

Dobberpuhl, president and CEO of start-up company P.A. Semi Inc. in Palo Alto, CA, was recognized for the design and engineering of a new generation of high-speed and low-power microprocessors. While at Digital Equipment Corp., Dobberpuhl started the Palo Alto Design Center, where he led the development of the StrongARM. In 1998, Dobberpuhl left Digital and cofounded SiByte Inc., where he served as president and CEO. There he led the development of the SB1250 chip, a high performance, coherent 64b multiprocessor CPU with high speed I/O, integrated multilevel caches, and 128b high performance DDR memory controller. SiByte was acquired by Broadcom Corp. in December 2000.

A professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Illinois, Gaddy was recognized for three decades of technical contributions and outstanding service in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests included gas lasers and subnanosecond response time laser detectors including special photomultiplier vacuum tubes and thin film infrared detectors. Gaddy also served as a consultant to McDonnell-Douglas in St. Louis, MO, and Varian Associates in Palo Alto, CA. He helped initiate an industrial affiliates program in physical electronics on campus, which attracted several million dollars in support. He also served as associate head of the ECE Department for the graduate and research programs. He later served as faculty coordinator for the ECE Alumni Association and as the department’s graduate coordinator until his retirement in 1993.

Shepherd, retired chairman of Texas Instruments, Inc., was honored for his leadership at TI, which helped create and shape the microelectronics industry. As he worked with the development of semiconductors at TI, Shepherd rose rapidly through the ranks and became president in 1967, CEO in 1969, and chairman of the board in 1976, a position he held until his retirement in 1988. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he received the University of Illinois College of Engineering Alumni Honor Award for Distinguished Service in Engineering and the university’s Illini Achievement Award.

President of the National Academy of Engineering since 1997, Wulf was recognized for his leadership in engineering as president of the NAE, and his advocacy of engineering education and technical literacy. Wulf, who is on leave from the University of Virginia, has conducted pioneering research in computer architecture, computer security, programming languages, and optimizing compilers. A member of the NAE, Wulf also founded a software company, Tartan Laboratories.

Also presented at the September 19 banquet were the ECE Young Alumni Award, which recognizes alumni less than 40 years old who have made outstanding contributions to their field, and the Marcia Peterman ECE Alumni Award, which is presented annually to a former ECE Alumni Board Member for dedicated service. Sreekanth Ravi (BSEE ’87) and brother Sudhakar Ravi (BSCE ’86), cofounders of SonicWALL Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA, received the Young Alumni Award. Sreekanth was honored for his entrepreneurial leadership in co-founding the Internet security appliance company, and establishing it at number one market share position worldwide. Sukhakar was recognized for his technical leadership in that endeavor. SonicWALL designs, develops, and manufactures comprehensive Internet security solutions that are used by companies of all sizes to both protect their networks and provide secure remote access connectivity. Sales in 2002 exceeded $100 million, and the company presently employs more than 350 people.

Se June Hong (MSEE ’67, PhD ’69), a retired researcher with IBM in Yorktown Heights, NY, received the Marcia Peterman ECE Alumni Award for his loyal service to the university and its alumni association. While at IBM, Hong had a broad research interest in fault tolerant computing, design automation and predictive modeling. He served as a visiting professor at Illinois, and he served on the ECE alumni board from 1995 to 2002, including three years as the Eastern region vice president. He received an ECE distinguished alumni award in 1989 and the U of I Orange and Blue Appreciation Award at the end of his service on the board last year.

About the ECE Department at Illinois
Currently ranked among the top four ECE departments in the United States, the Illinois ECE Department is internationally recognized for its excellence in research and teaching. Seven faculty are members of the National Academy of Engineering. With its 1,600 undergraduate and 550 graduate students, ECE is the largest department in the Illinois College of Engineering. The Illinois ECE Department has more than 19,000 alumni worldwide, including Nobel Prize laureate Jack Kilby (BSEE ’47). View the complete list of ECE Distinguished Alumni Award winners.