Min Kao

Min Hwan Kao is a Taiwanese-American electrical engineer, billionaire businessman and philanthropist, best known as the co-founder of Garmin with Gary Burrell. Born in 1949 in Zhushan, a small town in Nantou, Taiwan, he studied electrical engineering at National Taiwan University and then earned a master's degree in 1974 and a doctorate in 1977 at the University of Tennessee. Before starting his own company he did research for NASA and the United States Army and worked as a systems analyst, algorithm designer and engineering group leader at Teledyne Systems, Magnavox Advanced Products and King Radio Corporation, and also at AlliedSignal. In 1989 he and Burrell co-founded Garmin, which became best known for devices that use the Global Positioning System. Kao stepped down as chief executive in 2012 but remains executive chairman and a board member. He has given large gifts to engineering schools, including the University of Tennessee, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2011 for developing and commercializing compact GPS navigation devices.