Alumnus elected to engineering academy

5:45 p.m., Feb. 22, 2005--UD alumnus Kurt B. Akeley, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from UD and is now with Microsoft Research Asia, is among the new members named to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

Akeley was selected for his contributions to the architecture of three-dimensional computer graphics systems and the definition of OpenGL, now the industry standard in three-dimensional graphics development and display.

Akeley, recipient of a UD Presidential Citation in 1995, earned a bachelor’s degree from the University in 1980 and later received a master's degree from Stanford University. At Stanford, he studied with James Clark, who was developing a computer chip that would give personal computers the ability to model complex three-dimensional designs. The chip became the foundation of Silicon Graphics Inc., of which Akeley was a co-founder.

During his 19 years at Silicon Graphics, Akeley led the development of several high-end graphics systems, including GTX, VGX and RealityEngine. He also led the development of OpenGL.

Akeley, who has since earned his doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford, is now a senior research in the graphics group at Microsoft Research Asia, which has its headquarters in Beijing.

He is a named inventor on more than a dozen patents, is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and in 1995 was the recipient of the prestigious ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award.

Akeley is a member of the UD College of Engineering Advisory Council.

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