David Reuter

BSCE '88 and PhD DVM '92

Dr. David Reuter graduated from Purdue’s School of Civil Engineering in 1988 and was awarded a Presidential Fellowship to pursue an MD/PhD at Purdue’s Biomedical Engineering Center. During his pediatric training at the University of Pittsburgh, he observed the hardest part of pediatrics is to care for children for whom medicine doesn’t yet have a solution. Purdue’s engineering program taught him how to study a problem in meticulous detail, laying the foundation for novel solutions. It’s the children he lost to cancer and heart failure that inspired his life of innovation.

In 2000, Dr. Reuter started a company to develop a cardiac implant for people with heart failure. The goal was to treat leaky heart valves through catheters rather than open heart surgery. He led the effort from conception to regulatory approval and worldwide commercialization. Dr. Reuter’s greatest satisfaction is knowing the legacy of his teenage patient—who died from heart failure due to her pregnancy—lives on through the innovation she inspired.

In 2015, Dr. Reuter transitioned back to full-time clinical practice where he continued his innovative work by analyzing the problem of pregnancy-induced high blood pressure. This condition is one of the greatest contributors to maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality worldwide. His insights garnered the attention of the Gates Foundation, and in partnership with collaborators from Purdue’s School of Biomedical Engineering, they received a Gates Foundation grant to better predict and prevent preeclampsia. Their research confirmed that when a pregnant woman sleeps sideways, blood pressure is reduced. Efforts to raise awareness of the novel medical insights are ongoing.

In reflecting on the Purdue mentors who helped make his innovation efforts a reality, the wisdom of several mentors continues to ring true:

• Be bold and think differently – as encouraged by the late Dick Grace, Purdue Engineering Vice President for Students Services
• Dream big – as challenged by former Purdue President Steven Beering
• Nurture and empower others – as said by his former Biomedical Engineering advisor, Professor Willis “Tack” Tacker
• Earn the respect of others through our integrity and work ethic – as shared by Professor Leslie Geddes, founder of Purdue’s Biomedical Engineering Center

In summary, every innovator needs the courage to start, the resilience to fail and the perseverance to strive toward excellence.

Dr. Reuter would like to acknowledge his son, Thomas, who has joined him today to represent the critical ingredient of a loving family foundation. We are better able to pursue our dreams when we bring our family and friends with us. He’d like to thank Purdue for being a part of that invaluable foundation that enabled a life of innovation and service.

Jim Tompkins

BSIE '69, MSIE '70, PhD IE '72

Jim Tompkins is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. Over his 5-year career, he has started 15 businesses that have generated more than $2 billion in worldwide revenue. He has worked with private equity, designed countless industrial facilities and supply chain solutions, and enhanced the profitable growth of numerous companies — giving him an insider’s view into what makes great companies even better.

In 2020, he founded Tompkins Ventures LLC, a global hands-on solutions network that helps companies address the five major factors for business success: Capital, Digital Enablement, Supply Chain/Facilities, Organizational Development and Procurement. He previously spent over 40 years as founder and chairman of Tompkins International, transforming a backyard startup into an international consulting and implementation firm. In 2023. Jim also became chairman of Task4Pros, an app-based digital platform that connects warehouse service jobs with a base of registered professionals.

Jim received his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering in 1969, his Master of Science in Industrial Engineering in 1970, and his PhD in 1972, all from Purdue University.

Swagath Venkataramani

PhD ECE '16

Swagath Venkataramani is a Principal Research Scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, NY, where he has played a leading role in the research, design, development and deployment of multiple generations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) hardware. He is not just one of IBM’s technical leaders, but also a global leader in this highly critical field. Swagath develops hardware and software technologies that improve the computational efficiency of AI workloads. It is widely recognized that access to low- cost compute is essential for continued advances in AI. Swagath has made pioneering contributions to this grand challenge through two key technologies: hardware acceleration and approximate computing.

His inventions have driven IBM’s AI accelerator program and have had direct commercial impact on IBM Z (mainframe) systems. He was a primary contributor to the conceptualization and development of IBM’s RaPiD AI core.

The RaPiD AI core, fabricated in 7nm technology, demonstrated state-of-the art performance and compute efficiency through precision scaling. In 2021, the AI core was commercialized as an on-chip coprocessor on the IBM Z Telum processor. For the first time, this enabled real-time AI processing during financial services such as credit card fraud detection, payment and loan processing, trade clearing and settlement, money laundering detection, and risk analysis. This was one of the first examples of revenue-generating AI products in the industry.

With the advent of transformer-based AI models like ChatGPT, the demands of AI workloads grew exponentially. In response, Swagath focused on the development of a dedicated PCIe-attached System-on-[1]chip for AI with 32 RaPiD cores (>300 TOPS of INT8 compute). 

In 2022, this resulted in the announcement of IBM’s AIU.  AI supercomputing clusters comprising of 100s of AIUs have been built at:

• IBM Research, to support IBM’s data and AI platform, Watsonx;
• The University of Albany, to enable research in generative AI models;
• The University of Alabama, to enable the university, IBM and NASA to develop weather and climate AI models.

In 2024, IBM unveiled a new version of the AIU called Spyre designed for use across IBM product lines — including Z mainframes and Power systems. 

Swagath’s research has been recognized at IBM and in the broader technical community with several prestigious awards. At IBM, he received:

• The Corporate Technical Award (CTA) — IBM's highest corporation-wide technical recognition (2023),
• Two Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards (2020 and 2024),
• One Outstanding Innovation Award (2021), and
• Seven High Value Patent Application Awards (2019-2024).

In 2024, he was appointed an IBM Master Inventor in recognitions of sustained and outstanding contributions to intellectual property. 

Externally, his publications have earned:

• Two Best Paper Awards,
• Four Best Paper Award Nominations, and
• One Best Paper In-Session Award at top research conferences.

Finally, he received the Mahboob Khan Outstanding Liaison Award (2020) from the Semiconductor Research Corporation for exceptional mentorship.