Distinguished alumni Recognized

His accomplishments in the field of computer science include
the theory and practice of compiler optimization and leadership
in the development of parallel computation software. He
is a leader in compile-time analysis and “code optimization,”
and his work on automatic transformations to expose parallelism
also is well-known.
Kennedy’s work has found abundant commercial application
in companies such as IBM, Convex, Cray Research and others.

Kennedy founded and chaired the High Performance Fortran
Forum and founded the Rice Center for Research on Parallel
Computation, whose work involved some 100 researchers and
an equal number of graduate students, all of them scattered
across the country. Through his leadership skills, Kennedy
made the project work.

In recognition of these efforts, Kennedy was asked in 1997
by President Clinton to co-chair the President’s Information
Technology Advisory Committee.

In 1995 Kennedy was awarded the W. Wallace McDowell Award,
the highest recognition given by the IEEE Computer Society.
In 1999 he became only the third recipient of the ACM SIGPLAN
Programming Languages Achievement Award.

Kennedy was founding chair of Rice’s computer science
department and has supervised some 33 dissertations on programming
support software for high-computer systems alone. He recently
was named to the position of university professor —Rice’s
highest academic title — effective July 1.

Rapoport graduated from Rice summa cum laude with a double
major in legal studies and honors psychology. In 1985 she
completed her doctorate of jurisprudence at Stanford, where
she was a member of the Law Review and vice president of
alumni programs, while also finding time to win the women’s
intramural power-lifting competition.

From there Rapoport clerked for the renowned Joseph T. Sneed
III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
and then worked at the San Francisco firm Morrison &
Foerster, where she specialized in bankruptcy law, the field
in which she has established her national reputation.

In 1991, she returned to academia, when she became an associate
professor at the Ohio State College of Law. Within three
years she was a full professor with tenure. Rapoport was
then named dean and professor of law at the University of
Nebraska College of Law. In 2000 she returned to Houston
to head up the UH Law Center.

But, intrigued by the offer, Gonzales didn’t listen
to his friends. Since then, propelled by his combination
of integrity, intelligence and hard work, he has risen from
counsel to the governor to counsel to the president of the
United States, with postings as Texas secretary of state
and Supreme Court of Texas justice along the way.

Gonzales grew up in a large, poor family on Houston’s
North Side and got his first glimpse of Rice when he sold
sodas and hot dogs at football games. Gonzales dreamed of
one day attending Rice, but, even though he distinguished
himself in high school, family finances discouraged him
from applying to college. Instead he joined the Air Force,
where officers encouraged him to apply to the Air Force
Academy. But after he began attending classes there, Gonzales
remembered his dream of attending Rice. He applied, was
accepted, transferred and became an active member of campus,
playing intramural sports and joining various organizations.

After graduation, he attended Harvard Law School and from
there was recruited to Vinson & Elkins.

In 1995 he was named “Outstanding Young Texan”
by the Texas Jaycees; in 1997 he received a presidential
citation from the State Bar of Texas for addressing the
basic legal needs of indigents. In 1999 he was named Latino
lawyer of the year by the Hispanic National Bar Association,
and in 1999 and 2001 he was named one of the 100 most influential
Hispanics by Hispanic Business.

At Rice, Urquhart distinguished himself as the author of
a humor column in the Thresher. He earned his M.D. with
honors from Harvard in 1959, and then, at Massachusetts
General Hospital and the University of Pittsburgh began
investigating the importance of rate control in drug-delivery
systems. “He was instrumental in the development of
a new way of delivering drugs into the body,” said
J. Bruce Laubach ’55, a former classmate and now a
physician.

Urquhart first put his principles into commercial practice
with the ALZA Corporation. Under Urquhart’s guidance,
ALZA produced such revolutionary products as TRANSDERM-SCOP,
the first patch for transdermal delivery of drugs; PROCARDIA-XL,
the most widely used cardiovascular product of its time;
and the ALZET osmotic minipump, which made rate-controlled
drug delivery practical in basic pharmacology and endocrinology.

Urquhart went on to co-found APREX Corp. in the United States
and AARDEX Ltd. in Europe. The now-merged firms are leading
producers of computer technology capable of monitoring patients’
drug-regimen compliance.

But missionary Olive Givin changed his life, tutoring him
in English and convincing him to attend high school. Ruiz
had to walk 45 minutes to the school and scarcely spoke
English, but he graduated as valedictorian.

He got a partial scholarship to The University of Texas
at Austin, and Givin paid for the balance of his expenses
for his freshman year. “She didn’t want the money
back,” Ruiz said. “But she did want a commitment
from me that I would do the same for someone else.”
Ruiz got his bachelor’s and master’s at UT, and
then earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and physics
at Rice.

Ruiz began his career with Texas Instruments, in 1977 moved
to Motorola and in 1999 was handpicked by AMD founder Jerry
Sanders to be president and chief operating officer of Sander’s
company.
In 1999, then-Governor Bush appointed Ruiz to the Texas
Higher Education Coordinating Board. He was inducted into
the Hispanic Engineer National Achievements Awards Conference
Hall of Fame and serves on the Eastman Kodak Board of Directors.

Ruiz never forgot his promise to Givin and has helped a
number of low-income high school students with their expenses.
His concern that other young Hispanics have the same opportunities
that he had is ongoing. In a 2000 Rice address, Ruiz emphasized
the importance of immediate educational programs for Hispanic
youth. “Technology can close the gap between the haves
and have-nots,” he said.