Kevin Kornegay

Electrical engineer and engineering professor Kevin Kornegay was born on March 24, 1959, in Brooklyn, New York to Dorothy and Thomas Kornegay. Kornegay was one of five children in the family. He attended the Pratt Institute where he graduated with his B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1985. During college, Kornegay held a summer internship at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he worked for a year before going to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science in 1990 and 1992. In 1992, Kornegay wrote the chapter, "Chip and Board Testing," in, "Anatomy of a Silicon Compiler." Between 1998 and 2009, Kornegay was issued six U.S. patents for his work.

Kornegay became an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 1994. In 1997, Kornegay was the Dr. Martin L. King visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1998 to 2005, he served as an assistant and associate professor at Cornell University. In 2006, Kornegay joined the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology and became the Motorola Foundation Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research focused on computer chips and systems that make high-speed data transport possible through air, wire or optical fibers.

In 2002, U.S. Black Engineer Magazine named Kornegay the Black Engineer of the Year and he was featured in, "Science Spectrum." and. "U.S. Black Engineer & Information Technology." as one of the 50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science in 2004. In 2005, the National Society of Black Engineers bestowed Kornegay its Golden Torch Award for Educator of the Year.

He lives in Georgia and has two sons, Kevin Jr. and Justin.

Kornegay was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on April 15, 2011.