Brown CS News

Brown undergraduates Meredith Ringel and Andrew Schwerin have received honorable mention in the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate competition. They are two out of only 27 undergraduates nationwide so honored. Heartiest congratulations, Merrie and Andrew! In announcing the awards, CRA's Selection Committee said: "This year's nominees were a very impressive …

Readers of the New Yorker encountered an unexpected name in its November 27 issue on "The Digital Age": that of Steve Feiner, Brown B.A. (Music) 1973, Ph.D. (Computer Science) 1987. In a leisurely article discussing the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the bemused layperson's tone typical of the magazine, the …

We are sorry to report that Jak Kirman passed away recently. Jak received his PhD from Brown in 1994. He worked as a postdoc for Leslie Kaelbling and Tom Dean for the next year and a half and served the department as an instructor for the object-oriented section of CS04. …

Last week the 4th floor of our building here was invaded by a 6-8-person TV crew and all their voluminous gear that was making a film for PBS showing next year, `2001: HAL's Legacy'. Interviews with Professors Andy van Dam and Eugene Charniak were taped for this project, which compares …

At an October 17 luncheon at Brown's Faculty Club, Professor Emeritus Peter Wegner was awarded Austria's Ehrenkreuz (Medal of Honor) for his scientific contributions. (Wegner, born an Austrian citizen, went from there to England as a refugee at the age of six.) The Austrian consul in New York, Mr. Harald …

(from the Brown News Bureau) Brown Computer Science professors Franco Preparata and Eliezer Upfal are working on a method to sequence DNA that would be faster and more efficient than the current technique. They are attempting to improve on an alternative method known as sequencing by hybridization by inserting gaps …

In mid-September NSF announced the award of its prestigious Information Technology Research (ITR) grants. The major goals of the program are to augment the nation's information technology knowledge base and strengthen its IT workforce. NSF director Rita Colwell said, `These projects represent major innovations in information technology, rather than routine …

We're delighted to announce that Pascal Van Hentenryck has returned to Brown as Professor of Computer Science after a year and a half at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Accompanying him as Visiting Assistant Professor (Research) is Laurent Michel, Brown PhD '99. His enthusiastic friends and students in the Department …

We are delighted to announce that InterTrust Technologies is our newest Industrial Partner; we now have 10 Partner companies. By a happy coincidence, Joe Marconis, who previously worked for EMC and was largely responsible for their joining the IPP fold, recently began working for InterTrust and was responsible for InterTrust's …

Five students received their PhDs at Brown's May 2000 graduation, and a sixth has finished her PhD since then. Congratulations, all! Costas Busch, "A Study on Distributed Structures" (advisor: Maurice Herlihy). Costas is now an assistant professor at RPI. Jose G. Castanos, "Parallel Adaptive Unstructured Computation" (advisor: John Savage). Jose …