100 Notable alumni of Drexel University

Albert Laessle was an American sculptor and educator. He taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for more than twenty years and is best remembered as an animalier. He won the 1918 Widener Gold Medal.

Charles Henry "Bill" Sykes was an American cartoonist associated with the Philadelphia Public Ledger and Evening Ledger from 1911 until its closing in 1942.

Dr. Esther Romania Bunnell Pratt Penrose was a leading figure in Latter-day Saint (LDS) and Utah culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is widely known for being the first LDS woman to receive an MD degree and for being the first woman to be a medical doctor in the state of Utah.

Louise Payton Heims Beck, sometimes referred to as Mrs. Martin Beck, was an American librarian who became a vaudeville performer and the wife of theatre impresario Martin Beck. She assisted her husband in his theatrical enterprises until his death in 1940, after which she took over the management of his eponymous Broadway theatre. Along with Antoinette Perry and several other...

James G. "Jim" Nell is an American engineer. He was the principal investigator of the Manufacturing Enterprise Integration Project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and is known for his work on enterprise integration.

Cynthia "Cyndie" Anne Maryanoff is an American organic and materials chemist. Among other awards, she received the 2015 Perkin Medal for outstanding work in applied chemistry in the U.S.A.

Charlotte Blake Brown was an American physician. She was one of the first female doctors to practice on the West Coast of the United States and was a co-founder of the Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children, and San Francisco Hospital for Children and Training School for Nurses.

William C. Pfefferle was an American scientist and inventor.

Daniel Truitt is an American politician and engineer, and member of the Libertarian Party. In 2010, while a member of the Republican Party, he was elected to represent the Chester County-based 156th District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, defeating Democratic incumbent Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith. He was in turn defeated in his 2016 bid for re-election by West Chester...

Michael John McGuire is an American environmental engineer, laboratory director and writer whose career has focused on drinking water quality improvement. He has been recognized for his expertise in the control of trace organic compounds, inorganic contaminants and microbial pathogens in water. He is also known for his work in the identification, control and treatment of taste and odor problems...

Thomas P. Loughran, Jr. is an American physician-scientist who specializes in cancer research and treatment. He became director of the University of Virginia Cancer Center, F. Palmer Weber-Smithfield Foods Professor of Oncology Research and Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia on August 15, 2013. Between 2003 and 2013, Loughran served as the founding director of the Penn State...

Linda Marie Abriola is an American environmental and civil engineer who specializes in the study of organic chemical liquid contaminants in porous media. She is currently the Joan Wernig and E. Paul Sorensen Professor of Engineering at the Brown University School of Engineering.

Kenneth S. Kosik is an American neuroscientist, author, and professor whose research focuses on neural plasticity, including the molecular basis of plasticity, the evolution of synapses, and disease-related impairments of plasticity such as occurs in Alzheimer's disease.

Gurubai Karmarkar was the second Indian woman to graduate from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1892.

Lawrence Gordon Williams was an American businessman and military veteran who served four terms as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the 7th district of Pennsylvania from 1967 to 1975.

Kári Jónsson is an Icelandic basketball player who plays for Valur in the Úrvalsdeild karla. He was named to the Úrvalsdeild Domestic All-First team in 2016 when he helped Haukar to the Úrvalsdeild finals where they lost to KR. In 2022, he won his first Icelandic championship and was named the Úrvalsdeild Playoffs MVP. In 2023, he won the Icelandic...

Brent Bommentre is an American former competitive ice dancer. With partner Kimberly Navarro, he is the 2008 Four Continents bronze medalist and a two-time (2008 & 2009) U.S. national bronze medalist.

Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead was a pioneering feminist and obstetrician who promoted the role of women in medicine. She wrote A History of Women in Medicine: From the Earliest of Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century in 1938. She was born in Danville, Quebec, Canada, and died in Haddam, Connecticut, United States.

LaVerne H. Council, MBA, DBA was the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer for the Office of Information and Technology within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Council assumed this role in July 2015. President Obama nominated Council to the role in March 2015. Council was confirmed by the 114th Congress on June 23, 2015, making...

Annie Lowrie Alexander was an American physician and educator. She was the first licensed female physician in the Southern United States.

Samme Givens is an American professional basketball player for Oberá Tenis Club of the La Liga Argentina de Básquet (LLA). He played college basketball for Drexel University before playing professionally in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Israel.

Alison Macrina is a librarian, internet activist, founder and executive director of the Library Freedom Project.

Myrtelle May Moore Canavan was an American physician and medical researcher. She was one of the first female pathologists and is best known for publishing a description of Canavan disease in 1931.

Victoria Napolitano is an American Republican politician who served as a Councilwoman of Moorestown, New Jersey. She began her term on the Moorestown Township Council on January 7, 2013. She made history in 2015 by becoming Moorestown's youngest Mayor ever at the age of 26, and is the youngest female to ever hold the office of Mayor statewide. In 2016,...

Ellis Reynolds Shipp MD was an American doctor and one of the first female doctors in Utah. She founded the School of Nursing and Obstetrics in 1879, and was on the board of the Deseret Hospital Association. In her 50-year medical career, she led the School of Nursing and Obstetrics to train more than 500 women as licensed midwives.

Colonel Héctor Andrés Negroni is a United States Air Force officer, historian, senior aerospace defense executive, author, and the first Puerto Rican graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He was commissioned by Spain's Fifth Centennial Commission to write the "Historia Militar de Puerto Rico" (A Military History of Puerto Rico).

Tramaine Isabell is a retired American professional basketball player, lastly for Artland Dragons of the ProA. He played college basketball for the Missouri Tigers, Drexel Dragons, and Saint Louis Billikens.

Gabriela Mărginean is a Romanian professional women's basketball player who plays for the Turkey club İzmit Belediyespor.

Sarah Stilwell Weber was an American illustrator who studied at Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle. She illustrated books and national magazines, like The Saturday Evening Post, Vogue, and The Century Magazine.

Maria Collett is a Greek-born American politician serving as a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania State Senate who represents the 12th District. Her district includes portions of eastern Montgomery County and southern Bucks County. Collett is the first Greek American woman to serve in the Pennsylvania State Senate.

Ken Tribbett is an American soccer player.

Mark Gerban is an American professional rower. He represented the State of Palestine at the 2005 World Championships. Competing in the Lightweight Men's Single, he had the highest-placed World Championship finish (16th) of a Palestinian athlete in any sport (excluding Special Olympics events).

Robert J. Wicks is a clinical psychologist and writer about the intersection of spirituality and psychology. Wicks is a speaker, therapist, and spiritual guide who has taught at universities and professional schools of psychology, medicine, nursing, theology, and social work for more than thirty years. He is a Professor Emeritus at Loyola University Maryland.

George Campbell Jr. is an American theoretical physicist, who was the eleventh president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art from July 2000 to July 2011.

Panna Naik is an Indian Gujarati language poet and story writer who has lived in Philadelphia, United States since 1960. Working in the local university, she wrote poetry drawn from the world around her. Her book Pravesh (1975) received critical acclaim and she has published several poetry collections since.

William Sidney Pittman was an American architect who designed several notable buildings, such as the Zion Baptist Church and the nearby Deanwood Chess House in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. He was the son-in-law of Booker T. Washington.

Jeff Parke is an American former soccer player. He played 11 seasons in Major League Soccer, appearing in over 250 matches.

Paul William Richards is an American engineer and a former NASA astronaut. He flew aboard one Space Shuttle mission in 2001.

Amara M. Konneh is a Liberian national who serves as a Senator from Gbarpolu County, Western Liberia. Previously, he served as a senior advisor for Africa for the World Bank. In this role, he advised the World Bank on regional economic integration to create economic hubs for value chains and helped build strategic partnerships with Africa's regional economic commissions. Before...

Prineha Narang is an American physicist and computational material scientist. She is a Professor of Physical Sciences, and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Howard Reiss Chair at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Narang currently serves as a U.S. Science Envoy approved by the Secretary of State to identify opportunities for science and technology cooperation. Before moving to UCLA,...

Grace Drayton was an illustrator of children's books, fashion pages, and magazine covers. She created the Campbell Soup Kids. She is considered to be one of the first and most successful American female cartoonists.

Jean Frantz Massenat Jr. is an American-Haitian professional basketball coach and former player who is an assistant coach for the Drexel Dragons. In his collegiate career at Drexel University, He was named to the First Team All-CAA following the 2011–12 season as a sophomore, leading the Drexel Dragons to 2012 CAA men's basketball tournament where they were narrowly defeated by...

Denice Frohman is a poet, writer, performer and educator, whose work explores the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Frohman uses her experience as a queer woman from a multi-cultural background in her writing. By addressing identity, her work encourages communities to challenge the dominant social constructs and oppressive narratives in place that are currently working against concepts of unity...

Kamilė Nacickaitė is a Lithuanian professional female basketball player, currently playing for Tango Bourges Basket in France.

Steven Brandon Ward is an American television presenter, matchmaker, and entrepreneur. He is the host and executive producer of the show Tough Love, an American reality television series, which aired on VH1 from 2009 until 2013.

Angel De Cora Dietz was a Ho-Chunk painter, illustrator, Native American rights advocate, and teacher at Carlisle Indian School. A member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, she was a well-known Native American artist before World War I.

Alisa Melekhina is one of the top female chess players in the United States, a classically trained ballerina, and an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Drexel University.

Katharine Pyle was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people, an influential member of the Pyle artistic family, active in Philadelphia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, and a social activist, she published several accounts of Delaware's colonial history.

Earle Irving Mack is an American businessman and former United States Ambassador to Finland.

Ruth Hale was an American journalist who worked for women's rights in New York City during the era before and after World War I. She was married to journalist Heywood Broun and was an associate of the Algonquin Round Table.

Philip Alexander Goss is an American former basketball player. At a height of 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall, he was able to play at both the point guard and shooting guard positions.

Megan Curran Rosenbloom is an American medical librarian and expert on anthropodermic bibliopegy, the practice of binding books in human skin. She is a team member of the Anthropodermic Book Project, a group which scientifically tests skin-bound books to determine whether their origins are human. Rosenbloom is the author of Dark Archives, a 2020 non-fiction book on the history, provenance,...

Frank Earle Schoonover was an American illustrator. A member of the Brandywine School, he was a contributing illustrator to magazines and did more than 5,000 paintings.

William G. Boericke was an Austrian-born American physician and ardent, influential exponent of homeopathy. He is known in the field today as the compiler and editor of the Pocket Manual of Homeopathic Materia Medica. The ninth edition has endured as his most re-published version partly because of its then final inclusion of a mini-repertory by his brother, Oscar Eugene Boericke,...

Frank Roderick Elegar is a U.S. Virgin Islands-Guyanese professional basketball player who last played for Napoli Basket of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A (LBA). He can play as either a center or a power forward.

Peter Mafany Musonge is a Cameroonian engineer and politician who served as the 6th Prime Minister of Cameroon from 1996 to 2004, and was a member of the Senate from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure in the senate he was president of the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement's parliamentary group. Prior to his tenure as prime minister he was an...

Arthur Raymond Randolph is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a senior U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush and assumed senior status in 2008.

Elizabeth McCracken is an American author. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award.

Nicholas Sloan "Nick" Schorsch is an American millionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. Schorsch is the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of the investment services firm VEREIT.

Ashley Howard is an American college basketball coach, currently serving as an assistant coach at Villanova University, in his second stint with the program. He was the head men's basketball coach at La Salle University, a position he held from 2018 to 2022.

Moshe Kam is an Israeli and American electrical engineer. He is an engineering educator serving as Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Newark College of Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Until August 2014 he served as the Robert G. Quinn Professor and department head of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University. In 2011, he served concurrently...

Juan Marcos Arellano y de Guzmán, was a Filipino architect, best known for Manila's Metropolitan Theater (1935), Legislative Building (1926; now houses the National Museum of Fine Arts), the Manila Central Post Office Building (1926), the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex (1934), the Central Student Church (today known as the Central United Methodist Church, 1932), the old Jaro Municipal Hall (1934)...

Harish Singh "Harry" Sidhu is an American Republican politician and businessman who served as the 46th mayor of Anaheim, California from 2018 to 2022 after winning the office in the 2018 election. He was the first person of color and the first Sikh to serve as mayor of Anaheim. He was a member of the Anaheim City Council from 2004...

Gary K. Michelson is an American orthopedic surgeon, medical inventor, and billionaire philanthropist.

Michael Baum is an American businessman and investor. He is best known as the founder & CEO of Splunk, a big data software technology used for understanding machine-generated data primarily for systems management, security forensics, compliance reporting and real-time operational intelligence. Baum is the founder of six technology start-ups, five of which have been acquired and one (NASDAQ: SPLK) which...

Meinhardt Frank Raabe was an American actor. He was one of the last surviving Munchkin actors in The Wizard of Oz, and was also the last surviving cast member with any dialogue in the film. He portrayed the coroner who certified the death of the Wicked Witch of the East.

Jon "maddog" Hall is the board chair for the Linux Professional Institute.

John Gruber is a technology blogger, UI designer, and creator of the Markdown markup language. Gruber writes the Apple enthusiast blog Daring Fireball and hosts its accompanying podcast, The Talk Show.

Susan Seidelman is an American film director, producer, and writer. She is known for mixing comedy with drama and blending genres in her feature-film work. She is also notable for her art direction and pop-cultural references throughout her films, with a focus on women protagonists, particularly outsiders.

Jack Wall is an American video game music composer. He has worked on video game music for over 20 games including the Myst franchise, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty. Wall earned a degree in civil engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and, after a brief stint working in civil engineering, transitioned into music production....

Christopher J. "Fergy" Ferguson is a Boeing commercial astronaut and a retired United States Navy captain and NASA astronaut. He was the pilot of Space Shuttle Atlantis on his first mission to space, STS-115, which launched on September 9, 2006, and returned to Earth on September 21, 2006. He then commanded STS-126 aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. In 2011, he was...

Malik Jabari Rose is an American former professional basketball player. Rose played 13 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA), winning championships with the San Antonio Spurs in 1999 and 2003.

Thomas Charles Fulp is an American programmer. He created the website Newgrounds and co-founded the video game company The Behemoth.

Malcolm Kenyatta is an American politician from the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A member of the Democratic Party, he serves as the Pennsylvania state representative for the 181st district. He was the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania Auditor General in the 2024 election, and in February 2025 was elected vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. In June of...

Michael Joseph Behe is an American biochemist and an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).

Chris McKendry is an American journalist and television sports anchor for ESPN, where she has worked since 1996. She previously served as a long-time anchor on SportsCenter and currently works as the full-time on-site host for ESPN's tennis coverage of the Australian Open (until 2026, when she transitioned to play-by-play duties), Wimbledon, and the US Open. McKendry has the distinction...

Veda Scott is an American professional wrestler and color commentator. They have wrestled for various American promotions, including Ring of Honor (ROH), DDT Pro-Wrestling (DDT), Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), Shimmer Women Athletes, and Absolute Intense Wrestling (AIW). They have also wrestled internationally in Canada and Japan including Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling (TJPW), Revolution Pro Wrestling (RevPro), and Defiant Wrestling. They...

Stuart Hameroff is an American anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness and his controversial contention that consciousness originates from quantum states in neural microtubules. He is the lead organizer of the Science of Consciousness conference.

Anandibai Gopalrao Joshi was the first Indian female doctor of western medicine along with Kadambini Ganguly.

Damion Lee is an American professional basketball player who most recently played for Ironi Ness Ziona of the Israeli Basketball Premier League. He played college basketball for four years at Drexel University and transferred to Louisville for his final year of eligibility. After going undrafted in 2016, Lee played in the G League before signing with the Atlanta Hawks in...

Alexis Scott Davis is an American actress. She is known for playing Nya in The First Purge and Toni Braxton in the 2016 Lifetime television film Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart. In 2017, she had a starring role in the short-lived CBS drama series Training Day. She played Quiara in The L Word: Generation Q.

Paul Baran was a Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide, and went on to start several companies and develop other technologies that are an essential part of modern digital communication.

Katherine Grace McNamara is an American actress and singer. She portrayed Clary Fray on the 2016–2019 supernatural drama series Shadowhunters, receiving a Teen Choice Award and a People's Choice Award for her work. In 2022, she starred in the western action series Walker: Independence as Abby Walker, which earned her a Critics Choice Super Award for Best Actress in an...

Alexei "Lex" Fridman is an American computer scientist and podcaster. Since 2018, he has hosted the Lex Fridman Podcast, where he interviews notable figures from various fields such as science, technology, sports, the arts, and politics.

Alassane Dramane Ouattara is an Ivorian politician and economist who has been President of Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) since 2010. An economist by profession, he worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Central Bank of West African States (French: Banque Centrale des Etats de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, BCEAO), and was the Prime Minister of Côte d'Ivoire from November...

Charles Hirsch Barris was an American game show creator, producer, and host, author, and songwriter. A key crew member of several hugely successful game shows, he was the creator of The Dating Game (1965–2021), the original producer of The Newlywed Game (1966–2013) both for the ABC network and syndication, and the host and producer of The Gong Show from 1976...

James Philip Bagian, is an American physician, engineer, and former NASA astronaut of Armenian descent. During his career as an astronaut, he logged 337 hours of space-flight, over two missions, STS-29 (in 1989) and STS-40 (in 1991). After leaving NASA in 1995, Bagian was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine. He was also elected as member into...

Elizabeth Janet Gray Vining was an American professional librarian and author who tutored Emperor Akihito of Japan in English while he was crown prince. She was also a noted author, whose children's book Adam of the Road received the Newbery Medal in 1943.

Paul Bartram Dague was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Patricia Consolatrix Hilliard Robertson was an American physician and a NASA astronaut. She died in a plane crash prior to being assigned to a crew to fly to the International Space Station.

Howard Michael Benson is an American record producer from Havertown, Pennsylvania. He has been nominated for two Grammy Awards for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical in 2007 and 2008, among two wins and 16 total nominations for his productions. He is also the co-founder of the American record label Judge & Jury Records, alongside Three Days Grace drummer Neil Sanderson.

Peter Thomas DeMarco was an American physician who graduated from Albright College in Pennsylvania and achieved his doctor of medicine degree in 1957 from Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Helen S. "Reds" Torr was an American early Modernist painter nicknamed "Reds" for her hair color. Torr worked alongside her artist husband Arthur Dove and friend Georgia O'Keeffe to develop a characteristically American style of Modernism in the 1920s.

Elizabeth Shippen Green was an American illustrator. She illustrated children's books and worked for publications such as The Ladies' Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post and Harper's Magazine.

Violet Oakley was an American artist. She was the first American woman to receive a public mural commission. During the first quarter of the 20th century, she was renowned as a pathbreaker in mural decoration, a field that had been exclusively practiced by men. Oakley excelled at murals and stained glass designs that addressed themes from history and literature in...

Rebecca J. Cole was an American physician, organization founder and social reformer. In 1867, she became the second African-American woman to become a doctor in the United States, after Rebecca Lee Crumpler three years earlier. Throughout her life she faced racial and gender-based barriers to her medical education, training in all-female institutions which were run by the first generation of...

Rajiv L. Gupta is an American businessman, the current chairman of Aptiv, an auto parts company, and a former executive with Rohm and Haas, a manufacturer of specialty chemicals.

Wiesław Kazimierz Binienda is a Polish-American scientist, researcher, PhD, and professor and co-director of the Gas and Turbine Research and Testing Laboratory on the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Akron.

Ingeborg Rapoport was a German pediatrician who was a prominent figure in East German medicine and, at age 102, the oldest person to receive a doctorate degree.