Illinois Institute of Technology will award three honorary degrees at the 2013-2014 Commencement ceremony at 10 am on Saturday, May 17, 2014 on the IIT Main Campus:

Robin Chase

Robin Chase is a transportation entrepreneur. She is founder and former chief executive officer of Zipcar, the largest car-sharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a service that brings together car owners and drivers in a car-sharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. She is also executive chairman of Veniam’Works, a vehicle mesh communications company based in Portugal.

Chase is on the board of the World Resources Institute and on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s International Transport Forum Advisory Board. She also served on the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the United States Department of Commerce, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Program Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Massachusetts Governor’s Transportation Transition Working Group, and Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force. She lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment, including TIME 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators, and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers.

Chase graduated from Wellesley College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, and was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow.

Lynn Conway

Lynn Conway is emerita professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

While at IBM in the 1960s, Conway made foundational contributions to computer architecture. Recruited by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1973, she invented scalable digital design rules for silicon chip design, became the force behind the legendary textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems, and pioneered the teaching of the new design methods at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also invented an ARPANET e-commerce infrastructure for rapid chip prototyping, thereby launching a paradigmatic revolution in microchip design and manufacturing in the 1980s.

Conway has received many awards for her contributions, including the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Pender Award of the Moore School, and the Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computer Society. A fellow of the IEEE and the Computer History Museum, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, she also holds an honorary doctorate from Trinity College. Still active in research, Conway is affiliated with the Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSensing and Systems at the University of Michigan.

Conway earned her B.S. and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degrees from Columbia University in 1962 and 1963.

C. D. Mote, Jr.

C. D. Mote, Jr. is president of the National Academy of Engineering and Regents Professor, on leave, from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Mote was a member of the University of California, Berkeley faculty in mechanical engineering for 31 years. He held an endowed chair in mechanical systems and served as chair of the mechanical engineering department from 1987 to 1991. Fifty-eight Ph.D. students earned their degrees under his mentorship.

In 1998, Mote was recruited to the presidency of the University of Maryland, College Park, a position he held until 2010, when he was appointed Regents Professor. During his tenure the number of NAE members among the faculty tripled, three Nobel laureates were recognized, and an accredited school of public health and a new department of bioengineering were created.

He is an honorary fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Mechanics, the Acoustical Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Mote earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in mechanical engineering between 1959 and 1963.

For more information about the 2014 Commencement, visit the Commencement website.