Prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to address Stevens’ class of 2009
Both undergraduate and graduate speakers also are Stevens alumni
HOBOKEN, N.J. – Two prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, both Stevens Institute of Technology alumni, will address graduates at Stevens’ 137th Commencement ceremonies, to be held on the university campus, Thursday, May 21, 2009.
David Ladd, MS ’71, a venture partner at the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, Calif., will deliver the address at the 2009 Undergraduate Commencement. Dr. Yi-Qun Li, Ph.D. ’92, a co-founder of the Fremont, Calif., technology firm Intematix Corporation and currently the company’s vice president for engineering, is the featured speaker at the Graduate Commencement ceremony. Both speakers will receive honorary Doctor of Engineering degrees.
“Reflected in these two highly accomplished alumni is Stevens’ long-time commitment to the ideals of academic entrepreneurship,” said Provost and University Vice President George P. Korfiatis. “Their impressive track records of founding technology-based businesses and investing in promising start-ups demonstrate that Stevens’ impact is felt far beyond the New York region, influencing the culture of innovation in Silicon Valley and beyond.”
Commencement ceremonies will take place on the field of DeBaun Athletics Complex this year for the first time in the history of the 139-year-old institute.
(Note to reporters and photographers: Media attending must contact Patrick A. Berzinski, pberzins@stevens.edu, for press parking – no exceptions. Satellite-feed trucks will not be allowed on campus.)
As in past years, the undergraduate and graduate ceremonies will be held separately. The undergraduate ceremony begins at 10:30 a.m., and the graduate at 4:30 p.m.
Undergraduate ceremony – 10:30 a.m.
The undergraduate class will be addressed by David Ladd. Ladd spent more than two decades as an engineer and technology entrepreneur before joining the Mayfield Fund full-time in 1999.
He began his career as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and then joined ROLM Corporation, a Silicon Valley technology company, founded in the late 1960s, that produced some of the first all-digital voice equipment. He went on to co-found the voice messaging company Opcom/VMX, which later merged with Octel Communications. That company was acquired by Lucent Technologies.
Mayfield invests in early-stage companies in the communications/wireless, consumer/media, enterprise/software and semiconductor sectors. Ladd represents the investment firm on the boards of companies such as Casabi, which developed technology that enables the delivery of web-based content and services to cordless phones and other home-based smart devices.
In addition to his Master of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Stevens, he holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics from the University of California, Berkeley.
The Class of 2009 Valedictorian speaker will be first-in-class senior Michael Bertucci. Bertucci is a star volleyball player and academic standout. A student coach of the women’s volleyball team for the past three years, Bertucci is also involved in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, the American Cultural Club, the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, and Gear and Triangle, a campus organization dating back to 1919 of which he is president.
Bertucci is the second of five children, and when he began at Stevens his sister was already attending college and three brothers were preparing to. He was a recipient of the EAS Scholarship, the Class of 1939 Scholarship and the Scholar of Excellence Fund.
Bertucci plans to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry. As an undergraduate, he has interned at Merck, and he gives particular credit to Professor Ganguly for his successes in the classroom, the laboratory and the workplace.
Graduate ceremony – 4:30 p.m.
Addressing the graduate class will be Dr. Yi-Qun Li, who received his Ph.D. in Materials from Stevens in 1992.
Li has been involved in materials science research and development for the past 20 years, and has founded three start-up companies.
In 2000, he co-founded Intematix Corp., a technology firm that develops next-generation thin film materials for use in the solid state, or energy-efficient, lighting and imaging markets. Intematix also develops anti-counterfeit and security application materials, fuel cell and catalyst technologies and battery materials for advanced energy storage.
The company has dramatically r educed the amount of time it takes to develop new products, encompassing the cycle from discovery to manufacturing, from a five-to-10-year timeframe to one year.About Stevens Institute of Technology
Founded in 1870 and celebrating 140 Years of Innovation, Stevens Institute of Technology, The Innovation University TM , lives at the intersection of industry, academics and research. The University's students, faculty and partners leverage their collective real-world experience and culture of innovation, research and entrepreneurship to confront global challenges in engineering, science, systems and technology management.
Based in Hoboken, N.J. and with a location in Washington, D.C., Stevens offers baccalaureate, master’s, certificates and doctoral degrees in engineering, the sciences and management, in addition to baccalaureate degrees in business and liberal arts. Stevens has been recognized by both the US Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security as a National Center of Excellence in the areas of systems engineering and port security research. The University has a total enrollment of more than 2,200 undergraduate and 3,700 graduate students with almost 450 faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America as well as strategic partnerships with industry leaders, governments and other universities around the world. Additional information may be obtained at www.stevens.edu and www.stevens.edu/press.
