Dr. James Truchard, National Instruments president and CEO, cofounded the company in 1976 while working at the University of Texas at Austin. Under Dr. Truchard's leadership, NI pioneered the development of virtual instrumentation software and hardware which has revolutionized the way engineers approach measurement and automation applications. He has been recognized worldwide for his work with numerous awards and was also inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2007 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2003. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Truchard has grown NI from a three-man team to a global organization with more than 4,600 employees that has experienced 30 years of growth in its 31- year history. As NI grows, the company continues to thrive on innovative technologies. More than 200 new products are developed each year and used in test, control, and embedded design applications at more than 25,000 companies annually.

During his tenure, the company’s flagship product, NI LabVIEW graphical programming software, has evolved into an integrated development environment incorporating multiple computational models including data flow, C code, UML compatible statecharts, dynamic system simulation and control, as well as .m file textual math and analysis. The resulting programs can be written as inherently parallel applications, and are easily mapped to parallel hardware architectures such as multicore processors and FPGAs for optimal performance. Dr. Truchard will discuss both the history of innovation and the technology behind NI.