2 June 1997

Carnegie Group Endowed Professorship Awarded To Carnegie Mellon Computer Scientist

PITTSBURGH--Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Professor Mahadev Satyanarayanan is the first recipient of the Carnegie Group Chair, an endowed professorship created for the School of Computer Science (SCS) by Carnegie Group, Inc., and its founders. The company, established 14 years ago by four SCS faculty members, develops custom software using knowledge-based decision support systems for customer interaction.

Satyanarayanan has done pioneering research in the field of distributed file systems and is considered one of the founders of the emerging field of mobile computing. He is the chief developer of the Coda File System, which provides application-transparent support for disconnected and weakly connected network operations. He is working on a complementary approach--application-aware adaptation--in the Odyssey project, a platform for mobile computing.

Satyanarayanan holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. He received his doctor's degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon in 1983.

Upon graduation, he became a researcher in Carnegie Mellon's Information Technology Center, which developed the Andrew network in conjunction with IBM Corp. in the early 1980s. There, Satyanarayanan was a principal designer and implementor of the Andrew File System (AFS), a distributed system which allows large numbers of people to share data easily on a high-speed network. Later versions of AFS were commercialized and incorporated into the Open Software Foundation~s Distributed Computing Environment.

According to Computer Science Department Head James Morris, Satyanarayanan led the effort to analyze the system's performance and published an important paper showing its significant performance advantages over other contemporary systems.

"Satya has established a standard of excellence for reporting measurable research results at conferences," said Morris. "In addition, he is highly regarded for his contributions to educational programs in the School of Computer Science. He has collected numerous best paper awards at meetings and his unique student/advisor relationships have resulted in excellent doctoral theses."

Earlier this year, in recognition of his achievements, Satyanarayanan was one of three recipients of SCS' 1997 Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence.

Return to: SCS News Releases
SCS-Today
School of Computer Science homepage

This page maintained by copetas@cs.cmu.edu.