Russell L. Agrusa, BS '76

Founder, president and CEO of Massachusetts-based ICONICS Inc., Russell L. Agrusa, BS '76, is a strong advocate of education who believes his UB degree has served him well and contributed greatly to his personal success. In his May 2010 commencement address he stated, "I believe universities are the incubators of ideas and jobs, helping create the future generations of engineers and computer scientists in Western New York and across the country."

Agrusa's career began in Pittsburgh, Pa., at Westinghouse Electric Corporation, where he developed software for fossil and nuclear power plants, as well as the company's first distributed control system, the Westinghouse Distributed Processing Family. In 1983, he joined Foxboro Company in Massachusetts, leading the human machine interface (HMI) product development of the Foxboro Intelligent Architecture series distributed control system, an important aspect of many industrial automation systems in use today.

ICONICS, which Agrusa founded in 1986, is a major developer of open-connectivity and standards-based visualization software, HMI and supervisory control and data acquisition applications for manufacturing and building automation. With more than 250,000 installations worldwide, ICONICS counts 70 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies as its customers. Organizations such as Audi, Ford, the Pentagon, American Axle, U.S. Postal Service and London's Heathrow airport depend on ICONICS products for their mission-critical operations. ICONICS' global sales have enjoyed double-digit growth for nearly a decade, and the company has received numerous awards, including Inc.'s 500 Fastest Growing Companies, Microsoft's 2008 Partner of the Year and the 2010 Windows 7 product of the year. The company also has international offices in Australia, China, Czech Republic, France, India, Italy, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

In 2010 Agrusa received the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences' highest honor, the Dean's Award for Achievement. He also has been a member of the engineering school's Dean's Advisory Council and Delta Society since 2005, and is a generous donor. Among his gifts to UB is a $750,000 donation to support the construction of the new computer science and electrical engineering building on the North Campus.