FOR RELEASE: IMMEDIATESept. 20, 2000
CONTACT:Megan Galbraith(518) 276-6050[email protected]
NVIDIA's Curtis Priem Named Rensselaer Entrepreneur of the Year
TROY, N.Y. -- Curtis R. Priem, chief technology officer and co-founder of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has been named the William F. Glaser '53 Entrepreneur of the Year by the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Priem has been NVIDIA's chief technical officer since the company's inception in April 1993. In June, NVIDIA was heralded by Business Week as one of the world's best "Info Tech 100" companies. NVIDIA, the global leader in advanced graphics processing technology, received the magazine's highest ranking for semiconductor companies.
Priem will deliver a keynote address at a reception in his honor on Rensselaer's campus.
The reception will take place at 10 a.m., Friday, Sept. 22 in the Darrin Communications Center room 308.
Rensselaer's Entrepreneur of the Year award honors Rensselaer alumni who are successful entrepreneurs and role models. Priem is a 1982 graduate of the Institute with a degree in electrical, computer, and systems engineering.
Past recipients of Rensselaer's Entrepreneur of the Year award have included: Nancy Mueller, founder of Nancy's Specialty Foods, William Mow, founder of Bugle Boy Industries, and Warren Bruggeman, former vice president and general manager of GE's Nuclear Business Operations.
"Curtis Priem is an ideal role model to budding Rensselaer entrepreneurs," says Jack Wilson, co-director of Rensselaer's Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship. "He is both a brilliant technologist and a savvy creator of a new business."
"NVIDIA has established itself as a technology leader, and this award is a reflection of the caliber of people that work here," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at NVIDIA. "This is a tremendous honor for Curtis and NVIDIA, and we are very proud of this achievement."
Prior to NVIDIA, Priem worked at Sun Microsystems where he was the architect of the GX graphics products, including the world's first single chip GUI accelerator. He also worked at Vermont Microsystems Inc. where he developed the industry's first graphics processor, IBM'S Professional Graphics Adapter. Priem holds 88 patents, all of which relate to graphics and I/O.
The computing industry recognizes NVIDIA as the global leader in advanced graphics processing technology, honoring the company with the most graphics awards in the history of the PC industry.
The NVIDIA product family enables multimedia for the entire desktop computer market from workstations to Internet-enabled appliances. PC OEMs, add-in card manufacturers, system builders, and consumer electronics companies worldwide choose NVIDIA GPUs as the core component of their graphics processing solutions. For more information, go to www.nvidia.com.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1824, is the nation's first technological university. The school offers degrees in engineering, the sciences, information technology, architecture, management, and the humanities and social sciences. Institute programs serve undergraduates, graduate students, and working professionals around the world. Rensselaer faculty are known for pre-eminence in research conducted in a wide range of research centers that are characterized by strong industry partnerships. The Institute is especially well known for its success in the transfer of technology from the laboratory to the marketplace so that new discoveries and inventions benefit human life, protect the environment, and strengthen economic development.
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