Tze-Chiang Chen, a pioneer in the development of silicon chip technologies, received his PhD in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale in 1985. He is currently Vice President of Science and Technology Research & Development at IBM, where he led the development of technology that formed the basis of semiconductor devices in IBM computers. He also led a team of international collaborators to build the fastest and smallest DRAM technology and is an IEEE Fellow.

Tarek Sherif is the founder of Medidata Solutions, the leading global provider of cloud-based solutions to the life science industry—a business that supports clinical trials in over 115 countries and defines the vertical cloud company business model. Sherif led Medidata’s successful IPO in June 2009, positioning Medidata as one of the best performing companies to go public since 2009 and New York City’s most successful public technology company.

Robert Shulman joined the Yale faculty in 1979 and has played a leading role in the use of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMR) technology for biological studies. Shulman is the Sterling Professor emeritus of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and he founded the Magnetic Resonance Research Center at Yale. His group has used high field NMR spectroscopy to follow chemical reactions and brain activity and NMR imaging techniques.

After 10 years at Apple, Donna Dubinsky joined Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Pilot, becoming its president and CEO and carving out a new industry segment for personal digital assistants. The two left Palm to cofound Handspring in 1998, another leader in the early smartphones with the Treo. Dubinsky serves on Yale’s board and cofounded Numenta, Inc. in 2005.

Bing Gordon, who received his B.A. from Yale and his M.B.A. from Stanford, was a longtime Chief Creative Director of video game maker Electronic Arts where he drove branding strategy for EA Sports and contributed to the design and marketing of many EA franchises, including John Madden Football and The Sims. He was a founding director at Audible (acquired by Amazon in 2008) and is currently a General Partner and Chief Product Officer for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Fred Smith hatched the idea for an overnight delivery service that would become Federal Express in an economics paper he wrote while at Yale (famously, he professed to probably receiving a “C” on that paper). Smith’s idea was for a central clearing house where materials were exchanged. FedEx is now a $45-billion global transportation, business services and logistics company.

Marian Wright Edelman received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1963, and a decade later she founded the Children’s Defense Fund, the nation’s strongest voice for children and families. Edelman has received over 100 honorary degrees and awards including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Edelman was also the first woman elected by alumni as a member of the Yale University Corporation on which she served from 1971 to 1977.

Frank Ruddle joined the Yale faculty in 1961 and was a pioneer in the field of genetics—one of the first scientists to map genes on human chromosomes. His research led to the first transgenic animals, allowing scientists to study the way genes function in living organisms, and created the Human Gene Map at Yale in 1989, which paved the way for the Human Genome Project (launched in 1989).

The Chair of the Yale Dept. of Surgery, Gustaf Lindskog administered the first intravenous treatment of chemotherapy after witnessing the ability of nitrogen mustard to kill cancer cells in mice, launching a protocol that would save the lives of millions suffering from cancer.

John Fenn was a former Yale professor who earned his PhD from Yale in 1940 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 for developing Electrospray Mass Spectrometry, a technique that greatly advanced drug discovery and molecular study.