Prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to address

Stevens’ class of 2009

Two prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, both Stevens Institute of Technology alumni, will address graduates at Stevens’ 137th Commencement ceremonies, to be held 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, honoris causa.

“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.”

David 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.

Dr. Yi-Qun Li received his Ph.D. in Materials from Stevens in 1992.