Sam Blackman is dead at 41

EE alumnus Sam Blackman (M.S.E. ’99)  died over the weekend of a reported cardiac arrest at age 41.  He was the chief executive and co-founder of AWS Elemental, and considered one of the highest-profile tech executives in Portland.  He worked at Silicon Graphics and Intel, and spent six years designing integrated circuit products at Pixelworks, before leaving to form Elemental.  He is credited with building it into one of the city’s biggest startup successes.  Amazon bought Elemental in 2015 for $296 million.