John W. Poulton

Poulton serves as senior scientist at NVIDIA Corporation, where he has continued work he began more than 30 years ago of producing chip-to-chip communications circuits for high-performance computers. As a research professor at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill’s computer science department in the 1980s, he and his team developed techniques for computer graphics systems and image rendering that became industry standards. He has published over 40 papers, co-authored a textbook, is an inventor on some 70 patents, and is an Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Fellow.

Poulton holds a B.S. degree from Virginia Tech, an M.S. from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill, all in physics. He co-taught the first course in computer programming at Hollins as an assistant professor of physics from 1968-1970. His daughter, Sarah, is a member of Hollins’ class of 2006, and his grandmother, Elizabeth MacAtee Poulton, was Hollins’ director of student housing from 1929 to 1951.