Special Update: Class of 2016!
Claire Bono and Craig Knoblock are pleased to announce the birth of their second child, Margaret Rose, on January 17.
Monica Lam, doing great at Stanford, makes a special appearance at the November 19 Computer Systems Seminar, discussing "The SUIF Parallelizing Computer" (4:00 pm, Hammerschlag B131). She's in town for Supercomputing '96, along with slews of others. Also observed wandering through Wean: Sidd Chatterjee (UNC), Jeff Deutch (Sun), Thomas Stricker (in from Switzerland) and more.
Peter Schwarz, IBM Almaden Research Center, gave us a taste of "Garlic: An Object-Oriented Heterogeneous Midlleware System" at a special seminar on November 13.
Kenneth Goldberg, from the University of California, Berkeley, made a special appearance at the Robotics Seminar on Friday, November 8, discussing "Tele-Robotics via the WWW". Ken also served on the Robotics Thesis Committee for Srinivas Akella (soon to be alum :-)
Marc Donner, now a Vice President at the Union Bank of Switzerland in New York, presented "How to Succeed in Software" at the SCS Distinguished Alumni Lecture on Thursday, November 7 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. He was joined briefly via a guest introduction by Philip Lehman.
Observed at Homecoming '96, Don Heller and Phil Nemec!
SCS Alumni participated in the spring SCS Advisory Board: Educational Directions Committee, including: Peter Freeman (GaTech), Roy Levin (DEC), Richard Lipton (Princeton), John Ousterhout (Sun Microsystems), and Larry Snyder (University of Washington).
Kai-fu Lee jas joined Silicon Graphics as Vice President of their new Internet/Web Division.
We are delighted to announce that the following SCS students accepted offers of membership and were formally be inducted into Upsilon of Pennsylvania, CMU's Phi Beta Kappa chapter on May 18. The new inductees include: Kin-Chong Chan, Brian M. Hawkins, Christian D. Hoffman, Nicholas M. Kramer, Emile V. Litvak, Saleem Mukhtar, Nathan L. Segerlind, Barry E. Sheraw, Stan J. Simon, Chun Kwok So, Arthur T. Turco, Gen Utsumi, Kevin R. Walker, Naomi A. Waibel, and Stephan A. Zdancewic.
"In an unexpected victory of machine over man, Deep Blue, the brand new IBM chess computer, trounced the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, Saturday in the first game of their scheduled six-game match at the Pennsylvania Convention Center" noted the NY Times on February 11. "Kasparov's Mettle Proves Too Much for Metal Challenger" notes the February 19 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Feng-Hsiung Hsu and Murray Campbell members of the IBM team, were steadily on hand at the 6-game match. Kasparov was ultimately victorious with 4 wins.
Reporting live from the Philadelphia competition was Hans Berliner, whose articles have appeared daily in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As he notes, "...Deep Blue showed much mettle, but just as clearly, there is still quite a difference between the best human chess player and a metal and silicon challenger."
"A Mean Chess-Playing Computer Tears at the Meaning of Thought" was a featured article in the Monday, February 19 NY Times. Herbert Simon, who predicted in 1957 "that a computer would be the world chess champion" is interviewed. "He notes that "Deep Blue has to be considered a thinker...because along with its colossal ability "to spin its wheels", the brute force calculation which is the traditional strength of computers, it also has a sophisticated evaluation system."
Congratulations to the following SCS students(alumni/ae) who were inducted into Upsilon of Pennsylvania, CMU's Phi Beta Kappa Chapter, on Sunday, October 15: Alon Brown, Franklin Chang*, Scott Colville*, Adam Klivans, Andrew Ng, Daniel Richards*, and Jordan Tsvetskoff* (*graduated May 1995).
Special Update: Class of 2016!
Gordon Bell has assumed a new position with Microsoft Corporation. Along with Jim Gray, he will be setting up a San Francisco Laboratory that "tackles" new ideas and technologies. Among Gordon's interests are scalable computing and telepresence (telecomputing).
Bernd Bruegge is recipient of the School of Computer Science's Herbert A. Simon Award for Teaching Excellence in Computer Science and will be honored at the 1995 Carnegie Mellon Education Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, September 13, 1995.
Bernadette Callery has joined The Carnegie in Pittsburgh, as Museum Librarian in the Museum of Natural History. In her new position, she will be managing the development of the museum's collection, including preservation of materials and automating the system for improving accessibility.
A hearty congratulations to Jaime Carbonell, recipient of the newly established Allen Newell Chair in Computer Science. Per Jim Morris, Department Head, "...[Jaime] has made many significant contributions to AI and was the founder of the Center for Machine Translation, a flourishing laboratory devoted to natural language problems." Members of SCS also know him as a keen scientist, excellent teacher, committed advisor, avid early-Friday evening chess player, and above all, good friend. As Allen once noted, "beginnings are full of promise and potential." This new appointment, to a new chair, is a great beginning.
Ed Clarke has been selected as the recipient of the FORE Systems Chair of Computer Science. This honor recognizes Ed's many contributions to the field and his unique work in system verification.
The four founders of computer networking products pioneer FORE Systems, Inc.-- Eric Cooper (Chairman and CEO), Onat Menzilcioglu(Director), Francois Bitz (Vice President) and Robert Sansom (Vice President) --have contributed $1.5 million to establish an endowed chair on campus. Per Eric, "It gives us great pleasure to continue the tradition of excellence in education that we experienced at Carnegie Mellon. Our experience...provided the impetus to launch FORE. As one of the premier institutions in the country, [CMU] has been a strong source of talent for FORE Systems. We are confident that our relationship with the university will continue and grow through the professorship and through recruitment of CMU graduates."
Carl Ebeling is co-recipient, with Professor Gaetano Borriello, of one of four 1995 University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Awards, in recognition of their inspiring teaching, collaborative efforts and curricular innovations. This is the first university-wide teaching honor received by CSE faculty at the UW.
Oren Etzioni and his personal Softbot (software robot) "Rodney" are making it easier to navigate the Internet and are finalists in the "Annual Discover Award for Technological Innovation" from Discover Magazine. As noted in the June issue, Oren and his University of Washington colleague, Daniel Weld, have designed Softbot so that the "user can easily modify it to handle new Internet services as they become available." The awards are "a compendium of the most exciting and innovative new technologies, developed by the world's most innovative minds...you may not know their names, but their [the scientists and engineers honored] technologies will surely transform your life," says Al Gore. The 1995 included 35 finalists/winners in the categories of automotive and transportation, aviation and aerospace, computer hardware and electronics, computer software, environment, sight, and sound.
Ed Frank, of NeTpower Corporation, presented the first SCS Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series on Thursday, October 12 in Wean 7500. He was frank about how to "Follow the Money: A Look at Past and Future Trends in the Computer Industry," Check the alumni calendar for an abstract.
Susan Gerhart, University of Houston, was a featured speaker at the Programming Systems Seminar on Monday, October 23. She offered clues on "When Will Formal Methods be Usable? Some Concrete Evidence."
Chuck Geschke was named recipient of a Carnegie Mellon 1995 Alumni Merit Award, in recognition of his committed service to CMU and outstanding career achievements. At a special ceremony on May 20, during Commencement Weekend, Chuck and other the other alumni award winners, were honored at a special ceremony in the Kresge Theatre in the College of Fine Arts.
James Gosling's work with Java is documented in the August 28 issue of Forbes ASAP. As the article notes, "browers and servers may come and go, but successful new languages are extremely rare. Java, or something like it, is the key to a truly interactive Internet..." This is a good summary article on Java's many unique features and Jim's accomplishments.
James Gosling was featured in a September 25 New York Times article, "Making the PC Come Alive: A Software Language That Puts You in the Picture." Must be Java!
"Hammerhead: fast, fully automated docking of flexible ligands to protein binding sites", a paper by William Welch, Jim Ruppert and Ajay Jain, of Arris Pharmaceutical Corporation in California, appeared in the June 96 issue of Chemistry & Biology, a well-regarded journal which publishes high quality rsearch papers and reviews in all areas "at the interface of chemistry and biology." Hammerhead, a docking algorithm, is a "fast, automated tool to screen for the binding of flexible molecules to protein binding sites.
Takeo Kanade has announced the appointment of Matt Mason as the Program Chairperson of the Robotics PhD Program, effective September 15, noting, "Matt's world-class reputation in robotics research and his vision and enthusiasm in education will ensure the continued success and further enhance the Program." As many know, Steve Shafer, the Program Chair for the past three years, will leave CMU at the end of October. After 18 years in SCS, he is joining Microsoft on November 1. Per Takeo, "with his endless energy and deep insight, Steve made a critical contribution to establish this unique program in robotic education and to ensure its high quality." Congratulations to Matt and copious good wishes for continuing new successes to Steve---from all of SCS.
"Disconnected Oeration in a Distributed File System", Jay Kistler's 1993 thesis, was published in 1996 by Springer-Verlag, as part of their ACM Distinguished Theses Series. Bruce Nelson, Auspex Systems, and Andrew Birrell, DEC, were co-recipients of the ACM Software System Award. It is awarded to "institutions or individuals recognized for development of a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both." The award acknowledges their implementation of RPC, the remote procedure call system, which was first described in Bruce's Ph.D. thesis work. As noted at the ACM award ceremony in March, "while simple in concept, [remote procedure call systems] are very difficult to implement successfully."
Marko Petkovsek has rejoined Computer Science as a Fulbright Scholar and will working closely with Dana Scott on the development and teaching Mathematica-based courses.
Benjamin Pierce, University of Cambridge, visited us on October 10, 1995 as a speaker in the POP Seminar. He examined "Using Types to Computer OBjects and ADT's."
The 1994 A. M. Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery, has been awarded to Raj Reddy, Dean, SCS, and Edward Feigenbaum, Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force. They were honored for "pioneering the design and construction of large-scale artificial-intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of this technology." Per Stuart H. Zweben, "what's most significant about this 'pairing' of Turing winners is that the seminal work of both led to important practical applications of the principles and methods of AI. Both have had enormous influence on subsequent work in that field and in people's thinking about how to apply AI techniques to other applications areas." The Turing Award, presented annually, honors technical achievements which are deemed, by a jury of leading professionals, to be of lasting and significant importance to the computing community. The 1994 Award was formally presented at the ACM Computer Science Conference on March 1 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Roni Rosenfeld has accepted a position as Research Computer Scientist in Computer Science. Among his interests are statistical language modeling, human language technology and speech recognition.
Congratulations to Mary Shaw, Alan Perlis Professor of Computer Science, who has been designated an "ACM Fellow", an honor awarded to those "who have distinguished themselves by outstanding technical and professional achievements in information technology" by the ACM through their Fellows Program. Alan Perlis would be pleased, as is all of SCS.