Mark Dean

Birth: March 2, 1957
Death: Still Alive
Major Academic Events:-------

Since his early childhood days, his upbringing was characterized by his innate talent for math, having learned and applied trigonometry functions at an early age, and additionally having tutored older kids in this advanced subject. When he reached adolescence, and specifically in middle school, he had firmly decided to be an engineer, and later in high school, decided to be an IBM computer engineer. In Bacon Rota, Florida, he began working for IBM after he had graduated with a B.S in computer science and was top of his class with the highest honors (University of Tennessee). Professionally, he joined IBM as the chief engineer for the IBM PC/AT, PS/2 Model 70 & 80 and 2 years later, earned his M.S.E.E from Florida Atlantic University. In 1985, he coinvented the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) for direct connection of peripheral devices, and paramountly, got his Ph.D in double e from Stanford University.

Contributions to Computer Science:

Mark Dean coinvented the IBM PC along with the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) that permitted the connection of peripheral devices such as printers, disk drivers, and medical scanners to communicate directly with the CPU, enabling the connective ecosystem of IBM devices. For the IBM PC project, he was the chief engineer and headed the development of these computers into businesses and homes in 1980. The Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) and a monochrome adapter were invented by him, allowing for the current de facto display standard and higher color depth. In 1999 he led the development of the 1 gHz chip for 1 billion calculations per second, and he holds 20 patents while also receiving the honor of the first African American named an "IBM Fellow". He was later inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in 1997.

Associated links: IBM Mark-Dean biography
Mark Dean (Black Inventors)

Margaret Hamilton

Birth: August 17, 1936
Death: Still Alive
Major Academic Events:-------

In 1955, Margaret Hamilton had undergone the academic endeavour of mathematics as her major at the University of Michigan prior to transferring universities to the Earlham College-it being the same school that her mother attended. In mathematics she earned a BA while she minored in philosophy in 1958. Her curiosity to pursue advanced mathematics was sparked from her mentor,"Florence Long", who had caused her to develop a deep interest for abstract maths.

Contributions to Computer Science:

Margaret Hamilton punctuated the importance of software engineering, even having coined the term to give it legitimacy. In addition, she, serving as the director of the Software Engineering Division at the MIT instrumentation lab, subsequently led the creation of on-board flight software and modules for the moon along with the Apollo command. She heavily contributed to the Apollo 11 landing success as her asynchronous model for the software permitted the disabling of non-essential tasks. She found her own company, Hamilton Technologies, Inc., for software reliability and linguistics related to the universal systems language.

Associated links: Margaret Hamilton NASA Apollo Code
Margaret Hamilton National Aviation Hall of Fame

Ajay Bhatt

Birth: September 6, 1957 Death: Still Alive

Major Academic Events:--------

From the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Ajay Bhatt completed his Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) in 1980, which shaped his future career in chipset architecture. He received his master's degree from the City College of New York within the borders of the United States and subsequently had an illustrious career. Bhatt joined the intel company with his position as the senior staff architect for his team in Folsom. One of his most prominent accolades is the Padma Shri for his contributitions in technology.

Contributions to Computer Science:

Ajay Bhatt is most renowned for his contributions to the development of the universal Serial Bus or the USB while he was working at Intel. He was the coinventer of that product and innovated many other ingenius inventions such as the AGP, the PCI express, and other peripheral integrations. The PCI express was made as a high-speed, serial computer expansion to connect the motherboard to peripheral components like the GPU, NVME, SSDs, and other network cards. The USB replaced complicated legacy ports with a dedicated cable to connect peripheral devices to computers. Finally, the Accelerated Graphics Port created a high-speed, dedicated channel for connecting a video card to computer-systems, heavily improving 3D-rendering performance.

Associated links: Ajay Bhatt (Creator of the USB)
Ajay Bhatt - Chief Architect of USB (Linkedin)