University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Jim Rygiel is a visual effects supervisor. He has worked on major feature films since 1984, including The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Rygiel... was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin to parents of Polish descent. His father was employed at American Motors in Kenosha. Rygiel attended St. Joseph Catholic High School in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. In 1980, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Otis Parsons School of Design . Starting his career in 1980, Jim joined Pacific Electric Pictures, one of the earliest companies to employ computer animation for the advertising and film markets. In 1983, Jim's work took him to Digital Productions where he began work on The Last Starfighter , a film notable for its pioneering use of digital imaging in place of models. While at Digital Productions, Jim's commercial work was nominated for numerous awards, winning a prestigious CLIO award for the introduction of the Sony Walkman. From 1987 to 1989, Jim supervised numerous projects while at visual effects companies Pacific Data Images and Metrolight.
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Lynne Rae Perkins is a Newbery Medal winning American writer and illustrator of books for children. Her novel Criss Cross, winner of the 2006... Newbery Medal, is a book of vignettes, illustrations, photographs, and poems about a group of four small town teenagers. "Writing in a wry, omniscient third-person narrative voice, Perkins deftly captures the tentativeness and incompleteness of adolescence," said Award Committee Chair Barbara Barstow. "In 38 brief chapters, this poetic, postmodern novel experiments with a variety of styles: haiku, song lyrics, question-and-answer dialogue and split-screen scenarios. With seeming yet deliberate randomness, Perkins writes an orderly, innovative, and risk-taking book in which nothing happens and everything happens." Perkins' picture book Home Lovely was a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book. Her novel All Alone in the Universe was named an ALA Notable Book, a Booklist Editor's Choice, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book, and a Smithsonian Magazine Notable Book for Children. Perkins was born and raised in Cheswick, Pennsylvania, a suburb fourteen miles northeast of Pittsburgh in the Allegheny River Valley. She earned her B.A.
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Willem Dafoe is an American film, stage, and voice actor, and a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group. He has had... roles in a wide range of films, including Platoon, Affliction, Off Limits, Streets of Fire, To Live and Die in L.A., Born on the Fourth of July, The English Patient, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning, The Boondock Saints, Spider-Man, and The Aviator, and voice roles in Fantastic Mr. Fox and Finding Nemo. Dafoe has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice. The first was for his role in Platoon in 1986 and the second time for his performance in Shadow of the Vampire in 2000. Dafoe was born William J. Dafoe in Appleton, Wisconsin. One of seven children of Muriel Isabel and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe, he recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much." In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem. His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, and Canadian.
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Jack St. Clair Kilby was an American physicist who took part in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments ... in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000. He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer. Born in Jefferson City, Missouri, Kilby grew up and attended school in Great Bend, Kansas, graduating from Great Bend High School. Road signs at the entrances to the town commemorate his time there, and the Commons Area at Great Bend High School has been named The Jack Kilby Commons Area. Kilby received his bachelor of science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is an honorary member of Acacia Fraternity. In 1947, he received a degree in Electrical Engineering. He obtained his master of science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Extension in Milwaukee, which later became the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1950, while simultaneously working at Centralab in Milwaukee.
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Gerhard Ertl is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der... Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl’s research laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhausts and even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. His work has paved the way for development of cleaner energy sources and will guide the development of fuel cells, said Astrid Graslund, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. He won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces. The Nobel academy said Ertl provided a detailed description of how chemical reactions take place on surfaces. His findings applied in both academic studies and industrial development, the academy said. “Surface chemistry can even explain the destruction of the ozone layer, as vital steps in the reaction actually take place on the surfaces of small crystals of ice in the stratosphere,” the award citation reads.
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