2014 Computer Pioneer Award

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 30 May 2014 – IEEE Computer Society will recognize 13 accomplished technologists and educators for their contributions to the field on Wednesday, 4 June at the Board of Governors meeting in Seattle.

The individuals being honored at the 6 p.m. awards dinner include Linus Torvalds, the principal force behind development of the Linux kernel and overseer of open source development for the Linux operating system. Torvalds, who remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the original kernel, will receive the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award.

"We reward technical accomplishment, creative insight, and impact upon the world at large," said 2014 IEEE Computer Society President Dejan Milojicic. "These awards indicate the fundamental values of our Society and demonstrate the kinds of contributions that we have made to computing technology."

Yale Patt, a University of Texas at Austin professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Ernest Cockrell Jr. Centennial Chair in Engineering, will receive the 2013 Harry H. Goode Memorial Award for nearly a half-century of contributions to information processing. Brown University computer science professor Maurice Herlihy will be honored for his contributions to multiprocessor computation with a 2013 W. Wallace McDowell Award.

Norman P. Jouppi, a Google Distinguished Hardware Engineer, will receive the 2014 Goode Award for his innovations in computer memory systems. And for his work with spatial data structures, Hanan Samet, a Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, will be given the 2014 McDowell Award.

For his contributions to computer science education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of computer science and engineering Charles E. Leiserson is the 2014 recipient of the Taylor L. Booth Award. Northwestern University Cordell Breed Junior Professor of Design Liz Gerber will receive the 2014 Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award. John D. Carpinelli, professor of electrical and computer engineering and executive director of the Center for Pre-College Programs at New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Nagiza Samatova, a professor with the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University, will both receive 2014 Distinguished Contributions to Public Service in a Pre-College Environment Awards.

For their volunteer service, Annette D. Reilly, a senior staff member of Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions, will receive the 2014 Hans Karlsson Award, and IEEE Cloud Computing Initiative Chair Steve Diamond will receive the 2014 Richard E. Merwin Award for Distinguished Service.

In addition, four researchers and professors will receive 2014 Technical Achievement Awards, including:

• Kevin Bowyer, the Schubmehl-Prein Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, for "pioneering contributions to the science and engineering of biometrics;"
• W. Bruce Croft, a Distinguished Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, for "outstanding contributions to information retrieval and the development of search engines;"
• Srinivas Devadas, the Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for "pioneering work in secure hardware, including the invention of Physical Unclonable Functions and single-chip secure processor architectures;" and
• Albert Zomaya, the Chair Professor of High Performance Computing and Networking and Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney, "for outstanding contributions to the solution of scheduling problems in parallel and distributed computing systems."

Learn more about the IEEE Computer Society awards program.