Randall D. Ledford Scholarship II

Wake Forest University (and Physics Department) alumnus Dr. Randall D. Ledford '72 has generously endowed a scholarship for students applying to the university who intend to major in Physics. This is the second such scholarship established by Dr. Ledford, and it builds on the success of the first scholarship that was established in 2000. The new scholarship has also been partially supported through the generosity of a number of Wake Forest Department of Physics alumni, and is being established to recruit students from the state of North Carolina to Wake Forest. Dr. Ledford is Senior Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer of Emerson Electric Company, one of the world's leading electronics companies. Before joining Emerson Electric, Dr. Ledford was president and general manager of several divisions of Texas Instruments Inc. including software, digital imaging, enterprise solutions and process automation. He began his career at Bell Telephone Laboratories where he worked on UNIX development, fiber optic communication and microwave transmissions. While at Texas Instruments, Dr. Ledford led the company's development of the Digital Light Processor (DLP). The size of a postage stamp, this device is the world's most complex microelectromechanical machine, with 2.3 million parts. The DLP was featured in the first digital theater premiere of a major motion picture, Star Wars: Episode I.