Dennis S. Karjala ’61

Dennis died April 26, 2017, of complications resulting from treatment for cancer.

Born in New York City, he came to us from Bellaire High School in Texas. At Princeton, he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and ate at Dial Lodge. His senior-year roommates, living at Dial Lodge as officers, were Ron Shipman and Stan Panosian.

After earning a master’s degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana and teaching in Okinawa for several years, Dennis acquired a law degree at Berkeley and then practiced law in San Francisco.

In 1978 he began a 39-year career at Arizona State University College of Law and eventually became the Jack E. Brown Professor of Law, concentrating on intellectual law as it applies to new technologies. During those years he spent time as a visiting scholar or professor at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, the University of Hokkaido, the University of Tokyo (where he taught in Japanese), and the law schools at UCLA, Washington University, and the University of Minnesota.

He is survived by his former wives, Yoko and Katarina; daughter Sylvia; and stepchildren Barbora Hladek and Matus Mrocek and their families.