William Coughran Elected as New Caltech Trustee

Dr. William M. Coughran Jr. is a technologist with more than two decades of experience in large-scale computing and networking systems. He is known for his influential role as a Silicon Valley executive, mentor, and investor, helping ambitious start-ups grow into transformative companies.

Coughran began his career at Bell Labs, contributing to many significant projects, including the development of distributed systems and applications for modeling and verification methods. He went on to become vice president of the Computing Sciences Research Center, which was pivotal in creating C and C++ programming languages and the UNIX, Plan 9, and Inferno operating systems. He co-founded Entrisphere, later acquired by Ericsson, and served as its CEO until 2002. In 2003, he joined Google, progressing to senior vice president for research and systems infrastructure, overseeing the development of Chrome, YouTube, Google Maps, among other projects. Since 2011, he has worked at Sequoia Capital as a partner and coach for technology start-ups. While at Sequoia, he served as an advisor to Google until 2015.

Coughran holds BS and MS degrees in mathematics from Caltech and MS and PhD degrees in computer science from Stanford. He has served and currently serves on a number of academic councils, including Caltech's IST Advisory Council; corporate boards, including Quantum Circuits, Lilt, Alkira, Graphiant, Oso, Stairwell, and Prelude; and the San Francisco Opera board. He has held various adjunct and consulting faculty positions at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH Zurich), Duke University, and Stanford University. In 2024, he received Caltech's Distinguished Alumni Award.

Coughran and his wife, Bridget, reside in Los Altos Hills and have been married for more than 50 years.

Here, he answers questions about his mentors, career insights, and his initial encounter with Caltech.

Who are some university professors who were particularly influential in your life?

John (Jack) Todd at Caltech and Gene Golub at Stanford. [Todd was a mathematician and pioneer in the fields of computing and mathematical analysis. He and his wife, number theorist Olga Taussky-Todd, joined Caltech's faculty in 1957. Golub joined the Stanford faculty in 1962. His major contributions to the field of numerical analysis include the development of algorithms and software that enabled large engineering and scientific calculations to be performed effectively by computers.]

What have you learned during your career that you think others should know?

Engineering is easy; people are hard.

Do you think it is important to take risks in life? Why?

Yes, too many scientists are too narrow. Be a problem solver.

How did you become interested in Caltech?

I wanted to pursue physics. I was smart enough to be a computer scientist.