Stratasys

Earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Washington State University in 1976 and worked in the plastics industry before inventing Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) in 1988 while experimenting in his garage to make a toy frog for his daughter using a modified hot-glue gun. He and his wife Lisa patented FDM in 1989 and co-founded Stratasys in Minneapolis that same year, taking the company public on Nasdaq in 1994. He served as CEO for 25 years through the 2012 merger with Objet, received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2005, and was among the first five inductees into the TCT Hall of Fame in 2017.