Class Acts
For two centuries and counting, CWRU community members have broken barriers, made groundbreaking discoveries and inspired others with their creativity and courage. Here, find a small sampling of the alumni and faculty who have made their marks—then visit our Bicentennial website to learn about even more.*
*Our innovators list does not include trailblazers before 1900 or current CWRU faculty and their many accomplishments.
Innovators
Law and Elected Public Office
Florence E. Allen (FSM 1904, GRS 1908, HON 1926) became the first woman nominated and confirmed to afederal appeals court, in 1934, after a series of other firsts, including being the first woman on a state supreme court, in 1922.
Louis Stokes (HON ’91) was elected to the U.S. House of Rep-resentatives in 1968, becoming the firstBlack congressmanfrom Ohio and serving 15 terms. In later years, he was a distinguished visiting professor at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied SocialSciences. His CWRU ties stretch back to the 1940s when he attended Cleveland College.
C. B. King, JD (LAW ’52), was a prominent civil rights lawyer in Georgia, representing plaintiffs in landmark casesthat advanced school desegregation andvoting rights.
Stephanie Tubbs Jones, JD (FSM ’71, LAW ’74), was the first Black woman to representOhio in Congress, representing the 11th District (which included parts of Cleveland) from 1999 until her death in 2008.
Justin Bibb, JD (LAW ’18; MGT '18), became Cleveland’s second-youngest mayor in 2022 and was re-elected in 2025.
Inventions
Henry Gerstenberger, MD (MED 1903), was a pediatrics professor who developed the first simulated milk formula for infants in 1915.
M. Frank Rudy (CIT ’50) was an engineer and inventor who held more than 250 patents and revolutionized athletic footwear with Nike Air Sole technology.
Joseph B. “J.B.” Richey II (CIT ’62) developed the first commercially available full-body CAT scan in the 1970s and many other patient devices. He also served as a university trustee.
Robert Kearns, PhD (CIT ’64), invented the intermittent windshield wiper.
Larry Hornbeck, PhD (CIT ’65; GRS ’65, ’74 physics), is an inventor who received an Academy Award of Merit in 2015 for inventing the technology that led the film industry to convert to digital releases, distribution and projection.
Larry Sears (CIT ’69) developed wire- less systems that allowed utilities to read gas, water and electric meters remotely—technology that helped usher in what is now known as smart metering. He holds or co-holds more than 20 patents and is a CWRU trustee.
Peter Tippett, PhD, MD (GRS ’81, biochemistry; MED ’83), a physician, scientist and entrepreneur, developed the software that became Norton AntiVirus as well as other information-security technologies.
Paul Buchheit (CWR ’98; GRS ’98, computer engineering) invented Gmail as Google employee #23; he also co-founded FriendFeed, a social networking site later acquired by Facebook, now Meta.
Felipe Gómez del Campo (CWR ’16) launched a company as an undergraduate and was invited to the White House for a celebration of young entrepreneurs. Today, Gómez del Campo’s company, now called Spector Aerospace, is a Boston-based aerospace firm building hypersonic technology for the defense industry.
Medical/Healthcare Advances
Birdsall Holly Broadbent, DDS (DEN 1919, HON ’67), was a Cleveland dentist, orthodontist and dental faculty member. He invented a headpositioning device used in taking radiographs of the face and teeth and later co-invented a device to hold a patient’s head stationary during X-rays.
Fred D. Gray, JD (LAW ’54; HON ’92), a civil rights attorney, worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and other activists and leaders. He has argued pivotal civil-rights cases and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022.
Harry Goldblatt, MD, was a professor of experimental pathology who conducted pioneering research in the mid1930s that revealed how restricted blood flow to the kidneys causes high blood pressure, laying the groundwork for medications used today to manage blood pressure and reduce the risk of heart failure, heart attack and stroke.
Harland G. Wood, PhD (HON ’91), served as director of the campus Department of Biochemistry and was a pioneer in the field. In 1935, he proved that animals (including humans) and bacteria use carbon dioxide, which changed the longtime understanding of cell biology and improved the treatment of diseases involving metabolism, such as diabetes.
Hunter Peckham, PhD (GRS ’68, ’72, biomedical engineering), a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, pioneered research advances to use electrical stimulation to restore movement to people with spinal cord injuries. In 1989, he co-founded the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center, whose consortium members include CWRU.
Kenneth Kosik, MD (ADL ’72; GRS ’72, English literature), is a neuroscientist internationally known for his Alzheimer’s research, particularly involving the early-onset form of the disease in an extended family in Colombia.
Ann McKee, MD (MED ’79), has conducted pioneering research on the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and repetitive blows to the head. She was the lead author of a 2017 study that, in part, found CTE in 110 of 111 deceased NFL players’ brains and has presented her research to U.S. Congress and the NFL.
Arnold Caplan, PhD, was a CWRU biology professor and the first to discover and describe mesenchymal stem cells, which became the basis for the success of virtually all regenerative therapies. In 1992, he co-founded Osiris Therapeutics Inc. to develop stem-cell products to regenerate damaged or diseased tissue and treat inflammatory diseases. It was later sold.
Huntington Willard, PhD, led a team from the School of Medicine’s Department of Genetics that created the first artificial human chromosome in 1997.
Jackson T. Wright Jr., MD, PhD, professor emeritus, led a series of landmark studies on hypertension, including a 2015 paper showing that lowering systolic blood pressure to under 120 mmHg—rather than 140—reduced cardiovascular events by 25% and overall mortality by nearly 30%, prompting updates to U.S. and international guidelines.
Academic Pioneers
Jesse Shera, PhD, was dean of the School of Library Science from 1952 to 1970, an internationally known librarian and educator, and a pioneer in developing libraries and shaping how their information is organized, stored and retrieved.
David Van Tassel, PhD, was a history professor and heralded as the founder of National History Day. Launched in 1974, the immensely popular program has annual local, state and national competitions that draw more than half a million students annually from the U.S. and other countries.
Nathan Berger, MD, had an enormous impact in Cleveland and beyond. He was founding director of what's now the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, dean of CWRU School of Medicine, a renowned authority on hematology and oncology and a Distinguished University Professor.
H. Jack Geiger, MD (MED ’58, HON ’00), was a pioneer in the development of community health centers across the United States. Geiger also was a founder of organizations including Physicians for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Human Rights.
Community/ Public Health
Betty Smith Williams, DrPH, RN (NUR ’54), became the first Black student to earn her nursing credentials from Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. In 1971, she co-founded the National Black Nurses Association and later served as its president.
Barbara Nichols, RN (NUR ’66), spent decades as a trailblazing nurse leader. Among her roles: She was the first Black president of both the American Nurses Association and the Wisconsin Nurses Association.
Art Van Zee, MD (MED ’73), was among the first to sound the alarm in 1999 about fast-rising addictions to OxyContin, an opioidbased painkiller, and became an outspoken activist in the battle against the prescription opioid epidemic.
M.C. “Terry” Hokenstad Jr., PhD, served as president of the Council on Social Work Education, was a U.S. delegate to the 2002 U.N. World Assembly on Aging, and helped draft the International Plan of Action on Aging. He was dean of what’s now the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus.
Julie Gerberding, MD (WRC ’77, MED ’81), a renowned infectious disease specialist, led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2002 to 2009 and was the first woman to hold the position. She is now CEO of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health and chair of the CWRU Board of Trustees.
David Satcher, MD, PhD (MED ’70; GRS ’70, anatomy; HON ’90), was the nation’s first Black U.S. Surgeon General, serving from 1998 to 2002. He also directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1993 to 1998.
Claudia Coulton, PhD (GRS ’78, social welfare), a Distinguished University Professor Emerita, was a founder of what’s now the Center on Poverty and Community Development at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences. She was an early pioneer in transforming how data was compiled and analyzed to better inform policymakers and others to improve the lives of vulnerable populations.
Julie Stufft (CWR ’98) became the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2025. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, she most recently served as deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the National Security Council.
Computer Science/ Computational Science
Donald Knuth, PhD (CIT ’60; GRS ’60, mathematics; HON ’80), published the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming in 1968. Today his now multivolume opus remains an industry bible.
Terrence Sejnowski, PhD (CIT ’68), a groundbreaking neuroscientist and artificial-intelligence researcher, is among a small number of people elected to all four national academies.
International Relations
Darlene Grant, PhD (SAS ’84), served as a senior advisor to the director of the Peace Corps after posts as the country director in Mongolia and Kosovo.
François Philippe Champagne (LAW ’94, HON ’18) is minister of finance and national revenue in the Canadian government and was first elected as a member of parliament in 2015.
Walton A. Webson, DM (MGT ’04), is the permanent representative to the United Nations for Antigua and Barbuda.
Military Service and Space Exploration
Alene Duerk (NUR ’48) became the first woman rear admiral in the U.S. Navy in 1972. She served as director of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps from 1970 until retiring from the military in 1975.
Donald A. Thomas, PhD (CIT ’77), was a NASA astronaut and part of the STS-65 Columbia crew that set a record for flight duration in 1994, traveling 6.1 million miles in just under 354 hours.
Sharon Bannister, DDS (DEN ’92), rose through the U.S. Air Force to become a major general and director of medical operations, developing and executing policies and programs in support of 43,000 personnel and 76 hospitals and clinics.
Simon Ostrach, PhD, who was on the engineering faculty for 45 years, was named one of NASA’s 12 “Super Stars of Modern Aeronautics” in 1998 for his significant contributions to the agency’s programs during the previous 50 years.
Performing Arts
Kathryn Karipides (GRS ’59, physical education), the Knight Professor Emerita of Humanities, built a national reputation as a dancer, choreographer and teacher during the 1970s, and led the creation of CWRU’s undergraduate and graduate dance programs (the latter with then Professor William Kelly Holt).
Gina Gibney, MFA (WRC ’79; GRS ’82, theater), founded Gibney, a New York Citybased dance company, performing arts hub and social-action incubator, in 1991. She is known for pioneering programs that connect the arts with the broader community.
Rich Sommer, MFA (GRS ’04, theater), is an actor who has held prominent roles in films and TV shows such as Mad Men, The Devil Wears Prada and GLOW.
Elizabeth A. Davis, MFA (GRS ’06, theater), is an actress who starred as Thomas Jefferson in the 2022–2023 Broadway revival of the musical 1776. She received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in the musical Once in 2012.
Publishing and Media
Alix Kates Shulman (FSM ’53, HON ’01), an activist and author, wrote the best-selling feminist classic Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen and 14 other books.
William Baker, PhD (ADL ’66; GRS ’68, ’72, communication sciences; HON ’20), earned seven Emmy Awards as a television executive. He helped launch household names such as Oprah Winfrey, was CEO of New York Public Television for two decades and earlier helped create the Discovery and Disney cable channels.
Barry Meyer, JD (LAW ’67, HON ’15), spent 42 years at Warner Bros., serving as chairman and CEO from 1999 to 2013. Under his direction, the company consistently ranked as one of the strongest, most profitable and best-positioned studios fueled by successful TV series and movies, including ER and all of the Harry Potter films.
Richard North Patterson (LAW ’71) is a best-selling author who has written more than 20 novels with sales exceeding 25 million copies.
Tom Bachtell (WRC ’80) is an artist whose distinctive drawings and caricatures have been featured in The New Yorker and other national and international publications.
Xyla Foxlin (CWR ’19) is a mechatronics engineer, pilot and entrepreneur. She teaches the basics of engineering and fabrication on her YouTube channel with spirit and know-how as she builds everything from campers to boats to rockets. Her videos have had more than 45 million views, and her Instagram account has 280,000 followers. She was on the 2026 Forbes 30 under 30 list for social media.
Athletics
Don Shula (GRS ’54, physical education) became the NFL’s winningest head coach after beginning his career as the league’s youngest head coach in 1963.
Frank Ryan, PhD, led the Cleveland Browns to the 1964 NFL Championship and, while playing professional football, earned a doctorate in mathematics. He later was on the faculty at Case Institute of Technology even as he played in the NFL.
Lisa Bernard Rachul (CWR ’84) won the 1,650-yard freestyle at the first NCAA Division III Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship in 1982, the first woman in CWRU history to win a national championship.
Tori Penso (MGT ’15) was the first United States referee to officiate at a FIFA World Cup final match, which took place in 2023.
Bianca Smith, JD (MGT ’17, LAW ’17), was the first Black woman hired as a professional baseball coach, joining the Boston Red Sox organization as a minor league coach in 2021.
—Daniel Robison
Founders
The Sherwin Williams Co. Edward Williams (WRC 1864, GRS 1869) co-founded in 1866.
Cleveland Clinic George Crile, MD (MED 1887), co-founded in 1921. Crile graduated from Wooster Medical College, which later became part of what’s now CWRU School of Medicine.
Parker Hannifin Corp. Arthur L. Parker (CSAS 1907) founded the predecessor company, Parker Appliance Co., in 1917.
Lubrizol Launched as Graphite Oil Products Co. in 1928, co-founders included: brothers Kent Hale Smith (CSAS 1917, HON ’54), Vincent Smith (LAW 1920) and Kelvin Smith (CSAS 1922, HON ’47); and Alex Nason (CSAS 1922).
The Progressive Corp. Joseph M. Lewis, LLB (ADL 1927, LAW 1929), and Jack H. Green, LLB (ADL 1928, LAW 1930), co-founded in 1937. Peter B. Lewis (HON ’13) was later the company’s longtime leader.
Premier Industrial Corp. Started as Premier Automotive Supply Co. by brothers Jack, Joseph and Morton (HON ’07, CWR ’13) Mandel in 1940. It is now Premier Farnell PLC.
Craigslist Craig Newmark (CIT ’75; GRS ’77, computer science) launched in 1995.
Quality Electrodynamics Hiroyuki Fujita, PhD (GRS ’98, physics), founded in 2006. The company is a leading manufacturer of critical subsystems of MRI scanners for the global diagnostic imaging industry.
CardioInsight Technologies Graduate students turned entrepreneurs Charu Ramanathan, PhD (GRS '00, '04, biomedical engineering), and Ping Jia, PhD (GRS ’98, ’05, biomedical engineering), co-founded in 2006. It was later acquired by Medtronic for $93 million.
Dow Inc. Herbert Henry Dow (CSAS 1888, HON 1924) founded The Dow Chemical Co. in 1897.
Scout RFP Alex Yakubovich (CWR ’07) and Stan Garber (CWR ’07) teamed up with Andrew Durlak (CWR '07) and Chris Crane (CWR ’08) to co-found in 2014. The procurement software company sold to Workday in 2019 for $540 million.
Apartment List John Kobs (CWR ’03) co-founded in 2011 and remains chairman of the online platform. He is also CEO and chairman of Giant, an internet storytelling platform he co-founded in 2024 for kids, powered by artificial intelligence. Kobs is on the CWRU Board of Trustees.
Nobel Laureates
Albert A. Michelson Physics, 1907 A physics professor at Case School of Applied Science from 1883 to 1890, Michelson was the first American scientist to win the prize. He was honored for his optical precision instruments and the research carried out using them.
John J. R. Macleod, MD Physiology/Medicine, 1923 Head of the Department of Physiology at Western Reserve University from 1903 to 1918, Macleod shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin.
Polykarp Kusch, PhD, ScD (CIT ’31, HON ’56) Physics, 1955 Kusch shared the prize for precisely measuring that the magnetic moment of the electron was greater than its theoretical value.
Donald A. Glaser, PhD (CIT ’46) Physics, 1960 Glaser received the prize for the invention of the bubble chamber, which played an integral role in subatomic particle physics.
Frederick C. Robbins, MD (HON ’92) Physiology/Medicine, 1954 Robbins was a School of Medicine pediatrics professor when he shared the prize for isolating and growing the poliovirus, which led to the development of the first successful polio vaccines. He also served as the school’s dean from 1966 to 1980.
Earl W. Sutherland Jr., MD Physiology/ Medicine, 1971 Sutherland Jr. was at the medical school from 1953 to 1963 and served as a professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology. He earned the prize for discovering a cellular signaling molecule responsible for many metabolic processes. His work contributed to diabetes therapies.
Paul Berg, PhD (GRS ’52, biochemistry; HON ’97) Chemistry, 1980 Berg shared the prize for a groundbreaking gene-splicing technique, which became an important tool in biomedical research.
George H. Hitchings, PhD (HON ’95) Physiology/Medicine, 1988 A professor of biochemistry from 1939 to 1942, Hitchings shared the prize for discoveries of chemotherapy treatments for cancer, which led to the development of new leukemia therapies.
George A. Olah, PhD (HON ’95) Chemistry, 1994 A chemistry professor from 1965 to 1977, Olah served as department chair for two years. He received the prize for his research on superacids and carbocations.
Alfred G. Gilman, MD, PhD (MED ’69; GRS ’69, pharmacology, HON ’95) Physiology/Medicine, 1994 Gilman shared the prize for the discovery of G-proteins, which have been linked to diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and are the targets of many medicines.
Frederick Reines, PhD (HON ’96) Physics, 1995 Reines was a physics professor and chair of the department from 1959 to 1966. He shared the prize for discovering the neutrino, a subatomic particle that has no electric charge.
Ferid Murad, PhD (MED ’64, ’65; GRS, pharmacology; HON ’00) Physiology/Medicine, 1998 He shared the prize for showing how nitric oxide acts as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, which made significant contributions to treating cardiovascular conditions.
Paul C. Lauterbur, PhD (CIT ’51, HON ’00) Physiology/Medicine, 2003 Lauterbur shared the Nobel Prize for developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology.
Peter Agre, MD Chemistry, 2003 Agre completed his clinical training in a joint School of Medicine/ University Hospitals program. He shared the prize in chemistry for discovering aquaporins, proteins that form pores in cell membranes and allow water to move through them.
Edward C. Prescott, PhD (GRS ’64, operations research) Economic Science, 2004 Prescott shared the prize for the theory on the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles.
Richard H. Thaler, PhD (ADL ’67, HON ’03) Economic Science, 2017 Thaler is widely considered the father of behavioral economics.
—Juliene Jones (Class of ’28)
Olympians
Benjamin Spock, MD, professor of child development: gold medal, men’s coxed eights rowing (1924)
M. Rowland “Flip” Wolfe (ADL ’38): gold medal, tumbling (1932)
William R. Kerslake (CIT ’51; GRS ’55, chemical engineering): heavyweight wrestling (1952, 1956, 1960)
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, MD (MED ’61): gold medal, men’s coxed eights rowing (1956)
David W. Jenkins, MD (MED ’62): bronze and gold medals, figure skating (1956, 1960)
Sandra P. Knott (NUR ’62): track and field, 800-meter run (1964)
Siamak “Matt” Ghaffari (MGT ’03): silver medal, super-heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestling (1996)
Alexander Richards, earns his MD in May: men’s eight rowing (2021)
Shikha Tandon (GRS ’12, biology): 50-meter freestyle and 100-meter freestyle, swimming (2004)
Pioneering Academics
Case School of Engineering Launched the nation’s first macromolecular science/polymer degree (1968) and the third biomedical engineering department (1968); offered the nation’s first accredited computer engineering degrees (1971) and one of the first undergraduate degree programs in data analytics (2014).
College of Arts and Sciences Created what is now the Baker-Nord Institute for the Humanities, supporting not only scholarship within the field but encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations (1996). Launched the Humanity and Technology major, part of a new generation of interdisciplinary programs integrating humanities, arts and STEM fields to address complex societal challenges (2025).
Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Launched one of the nation’s first Master of Nursing degrees (1934), the world’s first Nursing Doctorate (1979) and the nation’s first advanced practice flight nursing program (2002).
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences Created one of the nation’s first university-affiliated professional graduate schools of social work (1915). Continued its educational leadership in social work with one of the first social science-based curricula (1950s) and later the first competency-based curriculum (2002).
School of Dental Medicine Joined the nation’s early cohort of dental schools with its founding (1892). Established the BoltonBrush Growth Study Center (1970), which has the world’s most extensive longitudinal collection of human growth data and represents the merger of projects that date back to the 1920s.
School of Law Launched the Henry T. King Jr. War Crimes Research Office (2002), the nation’s second such university-based office. Became the nation’s first law school to require all first-year students to pass a certificate program in artificial intelligence integrated into the foundational curriculum (2025).
School of Medicine Pioneered an integrated medical education focused on organ systems and team teaching in the preclinical curriculum (1952) that became the international standard. Created the first MD/ PhD dual degree program in the U.S. (1956), a model for similar programs and the nation’s first DMD/MD program with the dental school (2007).
Weatherhead School of Management Established several U.S. firsts: the PhD program (1964) and department in organizational behavior (1974); the competencybased MBA program for leadership and emotional intelligence (1990); and the doctoral program for practicing executives (1995).