Pat Gelsinger

hen Pat Gelsinger told his mother he had been promoted to CTO of chip giant Intel, she congratulated him and then asked: "That's great, but when are you going to finish your Ph.D.?"

While Gelsinger has started, and stopped, Ph.D. programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford, he's been busy with an Intel career that started when he was 18 and has included leadership of the teams that built Intel's 486, Pentium and Pentium Pro processors.

Gelsinger has been at the forefront of evolving the microprocessors Intel sells and ensuring they're built economically enough to reach the masses. More than eight out of every 10 Intel processors include innovations created or overseen by the engineer.

Gelsinger credits Intel founder and Chairman Andy Grove as an important role model, but says a host of others at Intel have influenced him. He sees his current role as a "conductor" of other innovators. The symphony of the next 10 to 20 years, Gelsinger thinks, will be wireless connectivity in computing.

"We are at the renaissance of wireless communications," he says. "I think we may have a decade or two of wireless innovations ahead of us."