Dr. Lewis S. (Lonnie) Edelheit retired from General Electric Company in 2001 after a successful tenure as Senior Vice President, R&D, and member of GE’s Corporate Executive Council.

Under his leadership, GE introduced numerous new leadership products, including digital X-ray and advanced ultrasound medical imagers, high-efficiency turbines for power generation, the GE 90 Jet engine, advanced lighting and electronics-based appliances and weatherable plastics, to name a few.

In 1986, Dr. Edelheit left GE to become president and CEO of Quantum Medical Systems, a venture capital-backed company that pioneered color-flow ultrasound for vascular imaging. He continued to lead Quantum after its acquisition by Siemens Corporation. He returned to GE in 1991 as manager of the R&D Center’s Electronic Systems Research Center, and in 1992 assumed leadership of Corporate R&D.

Dr. Edelheit is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, which selected him as the recipient of the 2001 George E. Pake prize. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY from 1995 until 2002. He was also a member until 2003 of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program. He serves on advisory boards of both the Physics and Bioengineering departments of the University of Washington. He is also on the board of the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Research and Education Institute in Boston. He is also on the Board of Directors of one public corporation, Sonic Innovation, and one private corporation, Hubspan. He is chairman of the Laboratory Advisory Committee of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In 1995, he received the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service. He has numerous publications and presentations.

A native of Chicago, Dr. Edelheit earned a B.S. degree in engineering physics and an M.S. degree and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois.