Caltech Board of Trustees Names William T. Gross As Institute's First Young Alumni Trustee

PASADENA—William T. Gross, who graduated from Caltech in 1981 with a BS in engineering and applied science, has been elected to Caltech's Board of Trustees as the Institute's first Young Alumni Trustee. Gross is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Knowledge Adventure, a La Crescenta, California, company that develops and markets interactive educational software for children, including "3-D Dinosaur Adventure" and "Isaac Asimov's Science Adventure II." The company made headlines this past June with the announcement that it would be developing multimedia software products in collaboration with producer-director Steven Spielberg, who has also made an equity investment in the privately held company.

In electing Gross the Institute's first Young Alumni Trustee, Caltech's trustees are inaugurating a new policy that will recruit outstanding alumni under the age of 45 to serve as voting members of the Board. "Young Caltech graduates are increasingly visible and successful in the development of new science and technology," says Board Vice Chair William Kieschnick. "As active technologists, researchers, and entrepreneurs in exciting, innovative fields, they will bring valuable experience and a fresh, contemporary perspective to the Board, and we look forward to their participation in helping to guide the Institute's teaching and research programs."

Now 36, Gross describes himself as an accidental entrepreneur. If so, he fell into his calling early, selling candy bars out of his locker while he was in junior high school. At Caltech, which he credits with teaching him discipline and instilling a certain amount of confidence, he moved into new territory, founding a successful stereo business two years before he graduated with his degree in engineering. His Pasadena store, Gross National Products, marketed a line of "Valkyrie" loudspeakers that Gross had designed and built in the Institute's mechanical engineering shop after being disappointed by the performance of a store-bought pair. Later renamed GNP Loudspeakers, the company became famous for the outstanding quality of its sound systems. Gross sold it to his partners in 1985.

Gross moved into the software arena in 1984, when he developed HAL, a computer interface program that improved on Lotus 1-2-3 by making it possible to operate the program using simple English-language commands. To market the product, he and his brother, Larry Gross, who received his BS in engineering and applied science from Caltech in 1983, launched GNP Development Corporation as the software development arm of GNP Loudspeakers. In 1985 GNP Development was purchased by Lotus Development Corporation, which then recruited Gross to develop an innovative software line. When his contract with Lotus expired in 1991, Gross founded Knowledge Adventure, whose sales for 1994 exceeded $35 million.

Contact: Sue Pitts (818) 395-3227