Randy Pausch

Computer science professor, Randy Pausch, was born on October 23, 1960. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1988. He was a member of the computer science faculty at the University of Virginia from 1988 to 1997 and spent a 1995 sabbatical working at Walt Disney Imagineering's Virtual Reality Studio before joining the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. He was the co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center and created the innovative educational software tool known as Alice that enables novices to create 3-D computer animations using a drag-and-drop interface. In September 2007, he gave a lecture entitled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, which was videotaped, found success on the Internet, and lead to a best-selling book entitled The Last Lecture. He died due to complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.