LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 2 October 2019 —Dr. David B. Kirk, former chief scientist and vice president of architecture at NVIDIA, has been named recipient of the 2019 IEEE Computer Society Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award.
Dr. Kirk is being recognized “for outstanding leadership in developing GPU computing and in engendering its rise to the mainstream of HPC.”
The Seymour Cray Computer Engineering award is one of the IEEE Computer Society’s highest awards and is presented in recognition of innovative contributions to high-performance computing systems that best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray. The award consists of a crystal memento, a certificate, and a $10,000 honorarium.
Kirk served as chief scientist and vice president of architecture, and later as a Fellow at NVIDIA. He is currently an independent consultant and advisor and serves on several nonprofit and for-profit boards.
He earned his Ph.D. in computer science with a minor in computation and neural systems in 1993 and M.S. in computer science in 1990 from Caltech. He also received M.S. and B.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kirk has long been known for his contributions to graphics hardware and graphics algorithm research. More recently, he has focused on computer science education, advancing parallel programming, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
Kirk received the 2002 Computer Graphics Achievement Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Technology (ACM SIGGRAPH) and, in 2006 was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 2009, Kirk was recognized with Caltech’s Distinguished Alumni Award. Dr. Kirk is inventor or co-inventor of nearly 100 patents in the areas of computer graphics and graphics hardware.
Previous Seymour Cray Award recipients include Gordon Bell, Ken Batcher, John Cocke, Glen Culler, William J. Dally, Monty Denneau, Alan Gara, John L. Hennessy, Peter Kogge, Kenichi Miura, Steven L. Scott, Charles Seitz, Burton J. Smith, Marc Snir, Steven Wallach, Tadashi Watanabe, and Mateo Valero.
The 2019 IEEE Computer Society Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award will be presented to Dr. Kirk at the SC19 Conference awards plenary session in Denver, Colorado on Tuesday morning, 19 November 2019.
For more information about IEEE Computer Society awards, visit www.computer.org/awards.
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