Six Illinois alumni named to Crain's Tech 50 list

Crain's Chicago Business released it's Tech 50 List and six of those listed are University of Illinois alumni, including four from the College of Engineering. The sixth edition features founders, CEOs, technologists, risk takers, investors and up-and-comers from the city's sweeping technology ecosystem.

Those Illinois alumni mentioned were:

• Greg Goff, 45, Chief Product Officer for Uptake. "The Chicago startup is combining the internet of things and Big Data to help Caterpillar and other old-guard companies reinvent their businesses. A University of Illinois grad with a degree in electrical engineering, Goff earned his stripes at Nielsen and Accenture."

• Michael Gray, Partner, Neal Gerber & Eisenberg. "Follow the money and people in Chicago tech long enough, and eventually they’ll lead you back to a lawyer with some serious nerd cred: He studied math at the University of Chicago and physics at the University of Illinois before earning a law degree at Northwestern University. Gray was a venture investor during the dot-com boom, then helped launch OCA Ventures before returning to law. He helped Model Metrics sell to Salesforce.com in 2011. Clients include startups Fooda and Yello, and George Bousis, founder of Raise Marketplace."

• Matt Hansen, Software Engineer, Google. Hansen earned bachelor of science degrees in both mathematics and computer engineering and a master of science in computer engineering from Illinois. "Hansen leads a Chicago engineering team behind one of Google’s most important products: a search platform for devices that don’t have browsers—think of its planned new voice-search product Google Home or the Gboard touch keyboard or AndroidWear. Hansen, who grew up in Tinley Park, joined Google as a developer eight years ago out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." 

• Steve Miller, Co-founder and partner. Origin Ventures. Miller earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business and Marketing from Illinois. "One of this e-commerce specialist’s early bets as a VC was online restaurant-ordering company Grubhub. It wasn’t Miller’s first big payday. He started early-stage investment firm Origin after his family sold its office supplies business, Quill, to Staples in 1998 for $1 billion. Now Origin is raising its fourth fund."

• Adam Robinson, Founder and CEO, Hireology. Robinson holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communication from Illinois. "How to disrupt the hiring process? Robinson’s second HR startup, Hireology, uses software to replace chores previously done via pen and paper or spreadsheets. It’s a hit with franchised businesses, from auto dealers to home health care providers."

• Adam Tilton, Co-founder and CEO, Rithmio. Tilton holds a B.S. and PhD in mechanical engineering from Illinois. "Wearables—the most widely available examples of the internet of things—could work a lot smarter, or so this former University of Illinois researcher believes. Tilton was developing software to track missiles when he saw how lousy first-generation wearables, like the FitBit, were at tracking motion beyond walking and running. So with U of I professor Prashant Mehta, he founded Rithmio, which lets users accurately account for a range of movement, from bench presses to kettlebell swings. Last year, the Chicago company got $3 million in funding led by Intel and KGC Capital."