David B. Kirk has long been known for his contributions to graphics hardware and algorithm research. By the time he began his studies at Caltech, he had already earned BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT and worked as an engineer for Raster Technologies and Hewlett-Packard's Apollo Systems Division, and after receiving his doctorate he joined Crystal Dynamics, a video-game manufacturing company, as chief scientist and head of technology. In 1997, he took the position of chief scientist at NVIDIA, a leader in visual computing technologies, and he is currently an NVIDIA Fellow. At NVIDIA, Kirk led graphics-technology development for some of today's most popular consumer-entertainment platforms, playing a key role in providing mass-market graphics capabilities previously available only on workstations costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.For his role in bringing high-performance graphics to personal computers, Kirk received the 2002 Computer Graphics Achievement Award from the Association for Computing Machinery and the Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Technology (ACM SIGGRAPH) and, in 2006, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions for engineers. Kirk holds 50 patents and patent applications relating to graphics design and has published more than 50 articles on graphics technology, won several best-paper awards, and edited the book Graphics Gems III. A technological "evangelist" who cares deeply about education, he has supported new curriculum initiatives at Caltech and has been a frequent university lecturer and conference keynote speaker worldwide.

An avid student of origami for more than 40 years, Robert J. Lang is regarded as a leading master of the art, with over 500 designs catalogued and diagrammed. Following a successful career as a physicist and engineer, during which he authored or coauthored over 80 papers and 50 patents awarded and pending on lasers, optoelectronics, folding, and computational origami, he is now a full-time origami artist.Lang's work combines aspects of the Western school of mathematical origami design with the Eastern emphasis on line and form to yield models distinctive, elegant, and challenging to fold. His work has been shown in New York's Museum of Modern Art; Paris's Carrousel du Louvre; the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts; San Diego's Mingei International Museum; and the Nippon Origami Museum, in Kaga, Japan, among others. In 1992, Lang became the first Westerner invited to address the Nippon Origami Association's annual meeting, and he has been an invited guest at international origami conventions around the world.A pioneer of the cross-disciplinary marriage of origami with mathematics, Lang has been one of the few Western columnists for Origami Tanteidan Magazine, the journal of the Japan Origami Academic Society. He is the author or coauthor of nine books and has consulted on applying origami to engineering problems ranging from air-bag design to expandable space telescopes. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America, a member of the IEEE Photonics Society, and editor in chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America, a member of the IEEE Photonics Society, and editor in chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. His many honors include the Clair Patterson Medal, the Maurice Ewing Medal, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he is a fellow of the Geochemical Society and the American Geophysical Union. An environmental consultant to private firms and public interest groups, he has served on a number of national scientific committees and has been a member of the visiting committee for Caltech's geological and planetary sciences division since 2000. Morel's work blends geochemistry, microbiology, biochemistry, and genetics in an attempt to understand how ocean life depends on its chemical environment and in turn shapes that environment, and he is renowned for how effectively he has shared that vision with students and colleagues.

David W. Thompson has been chairman and chief executive officer of Orbital Sciences Corporation since cofounding the company in 1982. The holder of a Harvard MBA in addition to his aeronautics degrees, Thompson has been interested in rockets since childhood, when he saw the first Sputnik in the night sky. One of America's leading space-related R&D and manufacturing companies, Orbital provides affordable space systems to commercial and government customers worldwide and has performed over 675 rocket launches and satellite deployments in support of commercial communications, Earth and space science, and the national defense. Before cofounding Orbital, Thompson served as special assistant to the president of Hughes Aircraft's Missile Systems Group, and as a project manager and engineer on advanced rocket engines at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. As a college student, he worked at JPL on the first Mars landings and on Space Shuttle projects at NASA's Langley Research Center and Johnson Space Center. Thompson's many honors include the National Medal of Technology, the National Air and Space Museum Trophy, the Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award, and the World Technology Award for Space. He has been named Industrialist of the Year by the state of Virginia, and High-Technology Entrepreneur of the Year. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics, he is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Astronautical Society, and the Royal Aeronautical Society. He has been elected president of the AIAA for 2009–2010.