Leonard Max Adleman

Co-inventor of the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) cryptosystem, Adleman is a theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science and molecular biology at the University of Southern California. RSA is in widespread use in...

Clifford Ivar Nass

Co-creator of The Media Equation theory, which holds that people tend to treat computers and other media as if they were either real people or real places, Nass was a renowned authority...

Marvin Lee Minsky

Co-founder of MIT's AI laboratory and a towering figure in artificial intelligence, Minsky was an American cognitive scientist and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.

Gerard J. Holzmann

Developer of the SPIN model checker, Holzmann is a Dutch-born American computer scientist and researcher known for his work at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey and at NASA. SPIN (short...

Mary Coombs

Recognized as the first female commercial programmer, Coombs was employed in 1952 as the first woman to work as a programmer on the LEO computers. A British computer programmer and schoolteacher, her...

Roger Sippl

Co-developer of the relational database Informix (INFORMation on unIX) and co-founder of Relational Database Systems (RDS), Sippl earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. He and...

Hong-Jiang Zhang

A leader in establishing Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) into a world-class basic research center in computer science, Zhang has been a prominent researcher in media computing, more specifically in video and image...

Algirdas Avizienis

Organizer and director of the JPL STAR research project from 1961 to 1972, Avizienis is a Lithuanian-born computer scientist whose effort resulted in the construction and evaluation of the experimental JPL STAR...

Tom Anderson

Founder of the social networking website MySpace, Anderson co-founded the site in 2003 with Chris DeWolfe. Anderson has served as president of MySpace, and later became a strategic adviser for the company....

Joe Schoendorf

Board member for industry pioneers such as Authorware/Macromedia, Schoendorf has been active in high-technology industries for 45 years. He holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and has served on...

Brian Wilson Kernighan

Co-author of the first book on the C programming language and programmer of well-known Unix utilities such as ditroff and cron, Kernighan worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and...

Tsugio Makimoto

A leader in Japan's semiconductor industry, Makimoto is sometimes called "Mr. Semiconductor" in Japan. He participated in the controversy over the trade conflict in the semiconductor industry between Japan and the US...

Michael Franz

Pioneer in mobile code and dynamic compilation, Franz led the Secure Systems and Languages Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine — one of the top research teams on dynamic compilation, virtual...

Walter (Dave) David Sincoskie

Inventor of the Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN), Sincoskie also installed the first ethernet local area network at Bellcore and helped invent voice over IP technology. He co-authored the first specifications for...

Severo M. Ornstein

Co-designer of Mockingbird, the first interactive computer-based music-score editor, and overseer of its programming, Ornstein is a retired computer scientist and son of Russian-American composer Leo Ornstein. He joined MIT's Lincoln Laboratory...

Donald (Don) Nielson

Supporter of the development of the first hand-held computer terminal, Nielson joined SRI in 1959 as a Research Engineer, taking on assignments in telecommunications technology while working on his Ph.D. at Stanford,...

Elizabeth (Jake) Jocelyn Feinler

Leader of the group that became the overall naming authority of the Internet, Feinler directed the Network Information Systems Center at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) from 1972 until 1989. Her group...

Elaine Surick Oran

Considered a world authority on numerical methods for large-scale simulation of physical systems, Oran pioneered computational technology to solve complex reactive flow problems. Her work unified concepts from science, mathematics, engineering, and...

David Albert Huffman

Best known for his legendary Huffman code, a compression scheme for lossless variable length encoding, Huffman joined the faculty at MIT in 1953. He was awarded the Louis E. Levy Medal in...

Robert W. Wisniewski

Manager of the Blue Gene software project at IBM Research — an initiative dedicated to exploring the frontiers in supercomputing, computer architecture, software for massively parallel systems, and the use of computation...