Japanese business mogul Sachio Semmoto (Ph.D. EE '71) tells Forbes magazine he owes much of his success to the time he spent at the University of Florida. Semmoto was interviewed for an upcoming edition of Forbes set to hit newsstands March 24. Though Forbes magazine isn't the only magazine to recognize the entrepreneurial greatness of the Gator Engineer. Semmoto was also featured in a February article in the Economist.

Semmoto has made a career out of attacking big telecom companies ever since he left the national monopoly, NTT. Semmoto started there in 1966 and might have stayed had he not used a Fulbright scholarship to get his engineering Ph.D. at the University of Florida in Gainesville. When Semmoto announced his excitement about going back to his NTT post, his roommate in a fraternity house, also a southern pastor's son, told him that his job was crap. Semmoto still wears his Gator tiepin in appreciation.