Barbara Crane

Meet Barbara Crane (M.S. PHOT ’66), Michael J. Graff (CHE ’77), and James U. Lemke (PHYS ’59), the 2016 Professional Achievement Award winners.

The Professional Achievement Award recognizes outstanding achievement in any professional field. This award honors alumni whose achievements in their fields have brought distinction to themselves as well as credit to Illinois Institute of Technology.

Described as “pioneering,” “legendary,” and “a paragon of photographic experimentation,” by art curators and critics, Crane has been the subject of seven retrospective exhibitions in her 60-year career. Her work is part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and dozens of other museums throughout the world. Crane first became interested in photography at age 12 while assisting her father in his amateur darkroom. By age 20, she was taking photographs commercially, and in 1964 she entered the seminal Institute of Design (ID) Master of Photography program at Illinois Tech. Shortly after, she was hired to create the three-year photography program at New Trier High School. Upon graduating from ID, she was offered a professorship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and became professor emerita in 1995.

Michael J. Graff

Graff has led chemical and polymer businesses across the Americas, Asia, and Europe.  Currently he is Chairman and CEO of American Air Liquide Holdings, a member of Air Liquide Group’s Executive Committee, and heads Air Liquide’s Industrial Gas businesses in North America, South America, and the Caribbean from its Houston, Texas headquarters.  He is the global chairman of the Electronics World Business Line and has global oversight for Safety and Industrial Systems (SIS). Prior to joining Air Liquide, he served in various leadership roles with BP and has diverse experience in a variety of fields including industrial gases, chemicals, polyesters, marketing and refining of transportation fuels, lube oils, hydrogen, business development, engineering, and construction.

James U. Lemke

Lemke is a serial entrepreneur and inventor with 114 patents. Currently he is founder and chief scientist at Achates Power, Inc., a company that produces lightweight automotive engines that are 20 percent more fuel-efficient than current engines. He is also chairman of the medical imaging device company Scan Physics. In 1968 he founded his first company, Spin Physics, Inc., which manufactured magnetic recording heads that were used in up to 50 percent of all television recordings and 90 percent of National Security Agency recordings. Lemke sold Spin Physics to Eastman Kodak and served as chief executive officer of Eastman Technologies. He has founded several other companies and has licensed his patents to IBM, RCA, 3M, and many others.

The 2016 Alumni Awards luncheon and ceremony will recognize 13 alumni and one civic leader. Help celebrate these extraordinary winners on Friday, April 29 at 11 a.m. in Hermann Hall. Registration is required, and tickets are $50 each.