Corey Carbonara, 44
Telecommunications Professor; Executive Director, Institute for Technology Innovation Management
Baylor University, Waco
Carbonara isn't a typical academic; his background is straight from the leading edge of multimedia. As Sony's first product manager for high-definition television in the mid-eighties, he worked with Hollywood studios on the latest video technologies. Since being tapped to head ITIM in 1996, he's worked with students, high-tech companies, and the public sector to apply new technologies to projects that tie together multiple disciplines. Carbonara and his fellow researchers, for example, are working with NASA to bring astronauts into Texas classrooms, via laptop computers and wireless transmissions, to teach math and science. Another project, one involving a Fortune 500 company, could bring digital healthcare into homes in the form of a box that would transmit patients' vital signs for monitoring purposes. "Part of our job is to provide research opportunities for students and faculty," Carbonara explains, "but part of it is to solve real-world problems."

Ken Kennedy, 54
Computer Science Professor
Rice University, Houston
Kennedy, the ann and john Doerr Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice, is Texas' brightest star in research at the highest levels of computing. In 1997 Bill Clinton tapped him to co-chair the White House Advisory Committee on High-Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology, and the Next Generation Internet, which has been studying the federal government's long-term research investment priorities. This year he'll be directly involved in cooperative projects at Los Alamos, the national research lab in New Mexico, to devise ways for scientists to solve massive computational problems using local or global networks. He's also active in promoting access to technology for girls and minorities in the Houston area.

Diana Natalicio, 60
President
The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso
Natalicio has not only lured more Hispanics to UTEP, a school with traditional strengths in engineering and the sciences, but she has also been a key mover in bringing El Paso students into the cyberage. In 1994 Bill Clinton appointed her to the National Science Board, which advises and oversees the National Science Foundation, and she currently serves as its vice chair. She's also been on the advisory council to NASA and is on the board of the Sandia Corporation, an arm of the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. Since Natalicio took over as president in 1988, UTEP has been using technology in all sorts of innovative ways, from offering online classes to creating The Borderlands Encyclopedia, a border-themed Web site and CD-ROM. Off campus, Natalicio has been a key player in the collaborative effort to use technology to improve public school education.