PASADENA—The California Institute of Technology is pleased to announce the election of Lounette M. Dyer, PhD, to its Board of Trustees.
Dyer is cofounder and chief technical officer of Cogit Corporation in San Francisco. Cogit delivers marketing automation software to help marketers continually optimize their high-value customer programs, build brand equity, and leverage advertising and promotional spending. A leading authority in the technologies that enable automated, closed-loop marketing campaigns, Dyer has more than 15 years of experience in software development, and expertise spanning computational neural systems, object-oriented technology, relational databases, and large-scale parallel systems.
Dyer has worked both as an employee and as a consultant at a variety of Wall Street firms, as well as Fortune 500 corporations in the transportation, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and high-technology sectors. She was also a senior software developer and early employee of ParcPlace Systems, a pioneer in object-oriented technology.
After receiving her BS in mathematics, computer science, and music from Western Michigan University in 1982, Dyer came to Caltech to earn her MS (1987) and PhD (1991) in computer science. Recently she was listed by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the "50 Most Influential Business Women of the Bay Area." Dyer also appeared on the cover of Forbes Magazine in December 1996, as one of 20 leading women entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. In 1997 the Caltech Alumni Association named her a Distinguished Alumnus of the Decade. She is also a prize-winning percussionist who has toured professionally.
Founded in 1891, Caltech has an enrollment of some 2,000 students, and a faculty of about 280 professorial faculty and 130 research faculty. The Institute has more than 19,000 alumni. Caltech employs a staff of more than 1,700 on campus and 5,300 at JPL.
Over the years, 26 Nobel Prizes and four Crafoord Prizes have been awarded to faculty members and alumni. Forty-three Caltech faculty members and alumni have received the National Medal of Science; and eight alumni (two of whom are also trustees), two additional trustees, and one faculty member have won the National Medal of Technology. Since 1958, 13 faculty members have received the annual California Scientist of the Year award. On the Caltech faculty there are 75 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and on the faculty and Board of Trustees, 68 members of the National Academy of Sciences and 46 members of the National Academy of Engineering.
Written by Sue McHugh