Steve Wozniak
Co-Founder, Apple
2018 Recipient of the Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award
A Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist for more than 30 years, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has helped shape the computing industry with his design of Apple’s first line of products – the Apple I and II – and his influence over the popular Macintosh.
In 1976, he and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer Inc. with Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. The following year, he introduced the Apple II personal computer – featuring a central processing unit, a keyboard, color graphics, and a floppy disk drive – and helped launch the personal computer industry. In recognition of his achievements, Wozniak was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000.
Through the years, Wozniak has been involved in various business and philanthropic ventures. He was awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment for single-handedly designing the first personal computer and for then redirecting his lifelong passion for mathematics and electronics toward inspiring grade school students and their teachers. He also started the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was the founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet, and Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. In 2014, he was awarded the Hoover Medal, an honor given for “outstanding extra-career services by engineers to humanity,” and was welcomed into the IndustryWeek Manufacturing Hall of Fame.
In October 2017, Steve co-founded Woz U, a tech education platform dedicated to educating and training people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt. Steve holds a degree in electrical engineering/computer science from UC Berkeley.
"If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach."
- Steve Wozniak
"Steve Wozniak’s impact on modern technology cannot be overstated,” said Leo Melamed, CME Group Chairman Emeritus and co-founder of the Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award. “His pioneering innovations in personal computing still help power our economy today."
- Leo Melamed, CME Group Chairman Emeritus and co-founder of the Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award
The CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award
The CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award is the signature program of the CME Group Center for Innovation. The award honors an individual or group of individuals whose innovative ideas, products or services have created significant change to markets commerce or trade. The award strives to celebrate innovation in action — not only the creative idea, but also the impact that practical application of the idea has made on improving the economic well-being of individuals, an industry or a nation.
CME Group named this award to honor Leo Melamed for his revolutionary achievements in introducing financial futures instruments to futures markets in 1972, and Fred Arditti, whose achievements in the 1980s developing CME's eurodollar interest rate and weather futures significantly advanced the management of risk in the futures industry. These innovations were instrumental in helping CME Group become the world’s leading derivatives marketplace.
Leo Melamed is recognized as the founder of financial futures. As Chairman of Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), he led the exchange's launch of currency futures with the creation of the International Monetary Market (IMM) in 1972—the first futures market for financial instruments. The introduction of financial futures paved the way for CME's launch of futures contracts on U.S. Treasury Bills, Eurodollars, and stock indexes in the decade that followed. In 1986, Melamed conceptualized CME’s Globex system, the first electronic trading platform for futures and options, and was instrumental in its launch in 1992. Currently Chairman Emeritus of CME Group and Chairman of Strategic Steering, Melamed continues his leadership role to help CME Group advance the world economy.
Fred Arditti developed futures contracts that transformed how businesses and individuals manage risk. Most notably, in 1981 he architected CME Eurodollar futures, the world's most actively traded futures contract today. Later, he was instrumental in strengthening in light of intensive competition in the new century from domestic and international markets. It was during this time that he originated weather futures. After his time at CME, he taught courses in futures and options while serving as a professor of finance at DePaul University in Chicago, as chairman of the University of Florida's Economics Department, and as a visiting professor at several institutions. His book “Derivatives” is the definitive textbook on the subject.
2017 – John Bogle
Founder and Former Chairman, Vanguard Group
2017 – Mac McQuown
Entrepreneur
2016 – Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor of the World Wide Web
2014 – Ben Bernanke
Chairman, The Federal Reserve System (2006-2014)
2013 – Sal Kahn
Founder, Kahn Academy
2012 — Jimmy Wales
Co-Founder, Wikipedia
2011 — Robert Merton
Nobel Prize-Winning Economist and School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance, MIT
2011 — Myron Scholes
Nobel Laureate and Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, Stanford University
2010 — David A. Ferrucci
Department Group Manager, Semantic Analysis & Integration, IBM
2009 — Harry Markowitz
Nobel Prize-Winning Economist
2008 — Michael Bloomberg
Mayor, City of New York
Founder, Bloomberg LP
2007 — Eugene Fama
Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, University of Chicago
2006 — Leo Melamed
Founder of Financial Futures and Chairman Emeritus, CME Group
2005 — William Sharpe
Nobel Prize Winning Economist and STANCO 25 Professor of Finance, Emeritus Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
In 2013, the CMAC unanimously recommended that the award be renamed from the CME Group Fred Arditti Innovation Award to the CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Awardin recognition of Leo Melamed's revolutionary innovation of introducing futures in financial instruments in 1972. Melamed's contributions enabled the creation of effective and efficient global risk management tools through futures markets. These innovations have been copied by financial centers around the world.
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