Distinguishing Engineers

The Pratt School of Engineering's alumni association honored alumni and volunteers at its annual awards banquet in April. Alan L. Kaganov B.S.M.E. '60 was presented the Distinguished Alumnus Award; Gregory R. Maletic B.S.E. '90 the Distinguished Young Alumnus Award; and William H. Younger Jr. the Distinguished Service Award.

Kaganov was chosen for his career of achievement in the health-care and medical-device industries, as well as his many contributions to Duke. He earned his M.B.A. at New York University's Stern School in 1966. He joined Johnson & Johnson, where he developed his interest in the biomedical field, and pursued a doctorate in bioengineering at Columbia University, earning his M.S. in 1972 and Sc.D. in 1974.

He joined the Davis & Geck subsidiary of Lederele and Baxter International in product development, eventually rising to vice president of technology and business development for the Baxter Corporation. In 1990, Kaganov became CEO of EP Technologies, a medical-device start-up that created a novel treatment for cardiac arrhythmia using radio frequency ablation. Under his leadership, the company became a recognized leader in catheter-based electrophysiology. EPT was the first to complete FDA approval for this therapy, which has helped to cure more than 170,000 patients.

He was a vice president at Boston Scientific until 1996, when he joined US Venture Partners, where he focuses on early-stage investments in the areas of medical devices, drug-device combinations, drug delivery systems, and biopharmaceuticals.

For fifteen years, Kaganov has helped recruit students for Duke as a member of the Alumni Admissions Advisory Committee. In 1996, he joined the engineering school's board of visitors and currently co-chairs its research and technology commercialization committee. He and his wife established the Alan L. and Carol M. Kaganov Scholarship to provide funds to bioengineering students at Pratt.

Distinguished Young Alumnus Award recipient Maletic is a co-founder of Zero G Software, which sells software tools, and C3 Images, a graphic design and video-production firm. He was a software engineer at Intergraph Corporation, where he created software tools for the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) market. While attending the business school at the University of Michigan, he was a summer intern at Apple Computer, which he joined full-time after earning his M.B.A. in 1995. He was named a product-marketing manager for the Mac Operation System in 1996. The same year, he and business partner Eric Shapiro formed Zero G Software.

Looking to capitalize on the rapidly growing market surrounding Sun Microsystems' new Java technology, Maletic and Shapiro created InstallAnywhere, the solution to the problem of distributing software simultaneously to multiple operating systems, a new and demanding need of Java developers.

Maletic created his newest company, C3 Images, to produce the film The Future of Pinball, a documentary chronicling the 1999 demise of Williams Electronic Games' pinball division, the world's largest--and next to last--pinball-machine manufacturer.

Younger, who received Pratt's Distinguished Service Award, has been actively connecting Duke engineering students and faculty with the venture-capital world since his son entered the Pratt school in 1999. An engineering graduate of the University of Michigan who earned an M.B.A. at Stanford University, he serves on Pratt's board of visitors. He established the DEVIL Fund (Duke Engineering Venture Investment Limited) and oversees its investment and membership.

Younger began working with Sutter Hill Ventures in 1981, after a six-year stint in sales, marketing, and distribution for Cummins Engine Company. Sutter Hill pioneered many of the practices that have become common in venture capital today. He is a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and former chair of the venture-capital committee of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Trust.

Younger and his wife, Lauren, have three children, including Mark Younger B.S.E. '03 and Julie Younger, a Duke sophomore in Trinity College.