John L. Hennessy
President, Stanford University

John Hennessy is Stanford's tenth president and the Bing Presidential Professor. Recognizing the need for multidisciplinary research to address today's challenges, he launched university-wide initiatives in human health, environmental sustainability, and international affairs as part of The Stanford Challenge. A member of the Stanford faculty since 1977, he also has served as university provost, dean of the School of Engineering, and chairman of the Computer Science Department. One of the foremost authorities on computer architecture, he led a team of researchers in the development of a high-performance reduced instruction set computer (RISC) that led to his co-founding MIPS Computer Systems (now MIPS Technologies). He has received numerous awards for his research, including a 2004 NEC Computers and Communications Prize for lifetime achievement in computer science and engineering and a 2005 Founders Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has lectured and published widely and is the co-author of two internationally used undergraduate and graduate textbooks on computer architecture design. He earned his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University and his master's and PhD degrees in computer science from the State University of New York-Stony Brook.  President Hennessy serves on the board of directors of Cisco Systems, Inc., and Google.