Edwin S. Kneedler

North Penn High School 1963

Top 10 Percent of Graduating Class NPHS
NPHS ACTIVITIES: Track & Field; Cross Country; Accolade; Band
Deputy Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice
Has argued 113 cases before the United States Supreme Court,
32 more than any other active lawyer
Edward H. Levi Award for Outstanding Professionalism and Exemplary Integrity, 2009
Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service, 1992, 2006 and 2009
Rex E. Lee Advocacy Award, 2004
U.S. Acting Solicitor General (2009)
Deputy Solicitor General (1993-2009)
Attorney, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Office of the Solicitor General (1979-93)
Attorney, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice (1975-79)
Law Clerk to Hon. James R. Browning, 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (1974-1975)
Oregon State Bar 1975
BS Economics, Lehigh University (1967)
University of Virginia School of Law (1974)

Ed was on the Track and Field Team at North Penn, running sprint events. Ed is especially grateful to this day for the calm coaching and encouragement Coach Crawford gave him, even though Ed was not a star runner on the team, and for the discipline he learned as a result. Ed also was on the Cross-Country Team, played in the Band, and was literary editor of the Accolade. Ed’s experience at North Penn – in academics, athletics, other extra-curricular activities, school spirit, mentoring by teachers like Ken Weir, and lasting friendships – formed a strong foundation for his life. Ed had deeper roots at North Penn too: his father, Harry Kneedler, taught and coached in Lansdale in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and his mother, Isabella Jones, taught and was a guidance counselor in Lansdale and at North Penn for almost 30 years.After graduating from North Penn in 1963, Ed attended Lehigh University, where he received a B.S. in Economics in 1967. Ed served as a VISTA Volunteer from 1968 to 1971, first at a Job Corps Center for disadvantaged youth in Eastern Oregon, and then with a program for migrant farm workers in Western Oregon.

Impressed with the work lawyers had done on behalf of migrant farm workers, and encouraged by his brother Lane (NPHS ‘59), who is a lawyer, Ed decided to pursue a career in the law and attended the University of Virginia Law School from 1971 to 1974. After earning his J.D., he served for a year as a law clerk for Judge James Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1975 to the present, Ed has worked in the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. He first served in the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which at that time was headed by now-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. OLC advises the President, the Attorney General, and federal agencies on various legal issues.

Since 1979, Ed has been in the Office of the Solicitor General, which represents the United States Government before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been a Deputy Solicitor General since 1993, and served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States in 2009, prior to the appointment of now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to be Solicitor General. Ed has argued 113 cases before the Supreme Court, more than any other lawyer in active practice. Ed’s responsibilities cover a range of issues in federal government cases before the Supreme Court, including the separation of powers under the Constitution, the First Amendment, international law, Indian law, public land and water law, ERISA, health care, and Medicare and other government benefit programs. Ed has argued a number of cases on behalf of the federal government in the lower federal courts as well, including most recently the suit brought by the United States to challenge the Arizona immigration statute as inconsistent with the federal government’s responsibilities. Ed is now also assisting in the Justice Department’s defense in court of the constitutionality of the health care reform legislation, the Affordable Care Act.

Ed regards it as a real privilege to have worked for the Department of Justice and to have represented the United States in court for his career. Ed’s wife Lynn has been a loving and supportive companion for 39 years. They met while Ed was serving as a VISTA Volunteer, and she now works for the Peace Corps. Lynn and Ed have two daughters, Jennie, who is a lawyer in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, and Anne, who with her husband Sam lives in Minneapolis and works for Cargill Corporation.

Gerson Rosenberg, Ph.D. is the C. McCollister Evarts, MD Professor of Surgery and Bioengineering; Chief of the Division of Artificial Organs, and Co-Director for the Biomedical Engineering Institute at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

In high school Gus could best be described as “non academic.” He did very well in the school’s vocational program, and did not consider attending college.

Upon graduation Gus went to work for a local roofing and sheet metal company. On one particular job he was exposed to several engineers, which sparked an interest in the profession. Gus became friends with a bright young engineering student attending Drexel University. He was so impressed with his new friend’s knowledge and ability to understand complex scientific problems that Gus decided he also had to attend college to better understand the science and engineering.

After a year of night school Gus became a full time engineering student. In 1966 he joined the Army ROTC program and in 1970 graduated with a BS in Mechanical engineering, and received his commission in the US Army.

Gus displayed a passion for all things mechanical with a heightened curiosity of how things worked. The vocational program at North Penn provided Gus invaluable skills that he has applied though out his engineering career in designing, building, and testing devices. He was especially fascinated with sports cars, and to this day continues to design, build, and race sports cars in SCCA national competition.

Gus became interested in Biomedical Engineering, the Artificial Heart and assisted circulation after hearing a presentation by a young physician Dr William S Pierce. Little did he know at the time that the course of his career was being set? Gus went on to earn a masters and PhD degree in mechanical engineering at Penn State. His thesis research spanned the design of a mock circulatory system to test blood pumps to the study of the effect of assisted circulation on myocardial oxygen consumption. Upon completing his Ph.D. and six months of active duty time in the Army, Gus joined the Penn State faculty, and in 1976 moved to the Milton S Hershey Medical Center to conduct his research.

Dr. Rosenberg has over 35 years of experience in the design, development and application of various circulatory support and heart replacement devices. He considers himself very fortunate to have had some of the world leaders in the field as mentors and later friends and had the privilege of leading the Artificial Organs Division consisting of some of the finest individuals in the field. He has been the principal investigator on NIH grants totaling over $30 million dollars. Dr. Rosenberg currently directs efforts on the development of two circulatory support devices to assist the failing heart.

Dr. Rosenberg was part of the original team that developed the current clinically available Pierce-Donachy left ventricular assist device marketed by Thoratec. He was the principal investigator on the development on the Penn State Electric Total Artificial Heart. This device is currently under development by Abiomed, Inc. and is referred to as the AbioCor II device. In addition, Dr. Rosenberg led the team that developed the Arrow LionHeart™, the world’s first completely implantable left ventricular assist device that was utilized in 30 patients. He is quick to give credit to the many people that work on the projects and to point out that without the interdisciplinary effort their success would be greatly diminished. Dr. Rosenberg has over 300 manuscripts, abstracts and book chapters. He has received funding from the Whitaker Foundation to establish the Biomedical Engineering Institute at Hershey. He has developed a graduate course on the design of artificial organs. Dr. Rosenberg has received several awards for his work. In 2002 he was named “Engineer of the Year” by Design News Magazine. He is a Penn State Alumni Fellow; a Founding Fellow of the AIMBE, and a life member of the ASME. Dr. Rosenberg has been a member of NIH Study Sections. He is an active reviewer for several journals. Dr. Rosenberg is the past president of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs, and is recognized worldwide as a leader in the design; development and evaluation of total heart and heart assist devices. He has advised and mentored numerous students in the colleges of engineering and medicine. To this day Dr. Rosenberg still has his “vocational roots” and continues his interest in sports car. He is an accomplished race car designer, builder and driver, competing for the past 26 years in SCCA national racing in cars that he constructed.

Dr. Rosenberg and his wife Irene are the proud parents of two daughters; Kate, a surface warfare officer in the Navy currently serving as on the USS Vicksburg CG69 and daughter Lisa, busy raising two lovely children ages four and six. 

Steve was known as a nerd in high school and had the nickname of “professor”. These were the waning last years of fallout from the Vietnam War… all types of smoke could be smelled in the hallways and corridors of NPHS! His teachers were all absolutely inspiring, especially in English and History and German.  He was on the track team as a sprinter. He also played violin in the NPHS orchestra. The gifted and advanced placement program at NPHS allowed him to enter Lehigh University with sophomore standing and graduated three years later with a double major in Biology and German. Both parents were in the sciences and their influences helped to secure a summer student position at the Baylor college of Medicine in Houston Texas in the Department of Cell Biology. It was a very exciting time as molecular biology was in its infancy. He spent two summers working in a laboratory involved with understanding reproductive hormone receptors and started his passion for the study of the reproductive system.

After graduation from Lehigh, he held a job at Smith Kline and French Laboratories as a research scientist in renal pharmacology.  He was also active in the North Penn Symphony Orchestra. Next, he entered Duke University and obtained a Ph.D. in Reproductive Biology/Pharmacology/Toxicology studying the mechanism of toxicity of organophosphate chemicals on the male reproductive system. After a postdoc at the NIEHS, he completed medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From there he went back to Duke to complete Residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology and then back to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed the subspecialty Fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Fertility. It is quite obvious that he was following the number one basketball teams around! He saw five national championships (between Duke ‘91, ‘92, UNC ’82, ‘93, and NC State ‘83) during his 14 years of doing “hard time” there.  In addition to being fluent in German and Hungarian, needless to say he became “fluent in basketball” as well!

In 1995, he joined Jay Schinfeld at Abington Reproductive Medicine and helped grow a  single office and 6 employees to its present state with seven office locations with five physicians and over 50 employees. There, he has been instrumental in offering the latest advances in assisted reproductive technologies. His clinic was the first to perform preimplantation genetic diagnosis on embryos to evaluate for the presence of single gene mutations to prevent the transmission of a disease and allow a healthy outcome. This can be done for over 200 different genetic diseases. T\His clinic has had over 5,000 live births from IVF alone. Dr. Somkuti has extensive experience and expertise in surgical and medical treatments of infertility, minimally invasive surgery. His research pursuits range from understanding endometriosis and its effects on implantation to exploring connections between  fertility and the environment, improving fertility preservation options in patients with cancer, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and understanding the effects of aging on fertility. He enjoys cycling, running, hiking, the beach, stamp and coin collecting, opera, music, fine wines, cooking, and traveling. Some of his best friends are still from his NPHS days.

Dr. Somkuti is proud of his two children: Livia a high school senior who is interested in a career in music and vocal arts and enjoys horseback riding, and son Michael, a junior, who is into computers, programming and his guitar.

GREG MOYER

North Penn High School 1971

Editor of Knight Crier
Global Television and Digital Media Executive
Greg Moyer is a Peabody award-winning television and digital media executive with deep
international experience and a track record of innovation in channel design, brand positioning,
programming, marketing, and global distribution. Moyer has operated in senior positions across
the television and digital media industries and has grown such esteemed brands as: Discovery
Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Food Network, and Fine Living Network both domestically and
internationally.
Blue Chalk Media: Founder and CEO (2013 to present)
Scripps Networks International; President & Chief Creative Officer (2009-12):First ever
executive to lead Scripps Networks domestic television channels Food Network, HGTV, Travel
Channel, and Fine Living Network overseas through a combination of channel launches,
strategic acquisitions, and enhanced syndication.
Cablevision Systems Corp. Rainbow Media Holdings, now AMC Networks, Inc. (1999-2008)
Led VOOM HD, the first all-HD suite of 15 television services programmed across an array of
genres from 2005-2008. Served as President, Regional Programming for Cablevision from
1999-2004.
Discovery Communications, Inc. (1985-1999): Served as Chief Creative Officer from 1996-1999
and supervised the company’s expansion into retail and large-format motion pictures (IMAX).
Served as President, Discovery Networks, U.S., from 1994 -1996
Bucknell University, Bachelor of Arts, 1975
INDUCTED 2014

Greg Moyer is an award-winning television and digital media executive with deep international experience and a track record of innovation in channel design, brand positioning, programming, marketing, and global distribution. A creative and inspirational leader, Moyer built and operated esteemed brands such as Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, VOOM HD, and Food Network International.

Last year Moyer founded a new company, Blue Chalk Media, which produces high quality, short-form documentary videos for distribution by journalism brands and companies wanting to show their products or services in the context of authentic storytelling.

Before joining the entrepreneurial ranks, Moyer joined Scripps Networks Interactive to become the first president of Scripps Networks International.  Within three years, Moyer launched the Food Network and Fine Living Network into 85 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and SE Asia while significantly expanding its long-standing program sales and syndication business.  He also led Scripps to acquire a 50% interest in UKTV, 10 cable and satellite channels co-owned by the BBC, and 100% of the Travel Channel International, allowing Scripps to expand its domestic Travel Channel franchise into 91 countries and 20 languages.

Prior to Scripps, Moyer led VOOM HD Networks, a new business unit started by Cablevision founder Charles Dolan, designed to provide abundant HD programming across 15 cable and satellite channels in the U.S. Under Moyer’s leadership, VOOM HD also launched two pioneering HD channels into 36 countries overseas and was acclaimed for its innovative channel packaging and design. At Cablevision, the dominant cable operator serving New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, he took the newly created post of President, Regional Programming. There he was responsible for five regional news channels, five hyper-local Traffic and Weather channels, and two city-centric lifestyle and entertainment services.

Moyer began his television career in 1985 as one of the first 20 employees hired at a newly launched cable service called “The Discovery Channel”.  Over the span of 13 years, he led communications and marketing, then programming, then all aspects of the domestic networks, Discovery Channel and TLC. Ultimately Moyer was the first to hold the title of Chief Creative Officer where he operated as the brand steward responsible for all Discovery product development across television, retail, and digital. While in charge of programming, Discovery was honored with five George Foster Peabody Awards for programming excellence.