Former PITAC Members Biographies
(Updated December 2002)
 |
Eric A. Benhamou's
professional and personal accomplishments center on the creation and
intelligent deployment of information technology, around the world,
both in business and non-profit environments.
Eric Benhamou is the chairman of the Board of Directors of 3Com Corporation,
Palm Inc. He served as chief executive officer of 3Com Corporation
from September 1990 until December 31, 2000. Previously, he held a
variety of senior management positions in engineering, operations,
and management at 3Com.
In 1981, Mr. Benhamou co-founded Bridge Communications, an early networking
pioneer, and was vice president of engineering until its merger with
3Com in 1987. Before joining Bridge Communications, he worked four
years at Zilog, Inc., serving as project manager, software engineering
manager and design engineer.
In 1992, he received the President's Environment and Conservation
Challenge Award, the United States' highest environmental award. In
1997, former President Bill Clinton appointed Mr. Benhamou to the
President's Information Technology Advisory Committee which advises
the President on research and development focal points of federal
programs to maintain United States leadership in advanced computing
and communications technologies and their applications.
In 1998 Mr. Benhamou was recognized by former Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu with the Foreign Investor Jubilee Award for investments
and contributions made by the company in furthering the ongoing development
of Israel’s economy. That same year, Benhamou received the Ellis
Island Medal of Honor, which pays homage to the immigrant experience,
as well as individual achievement to U.S. citizens from various ethnic
backgrounds. He is also a graduate of the American Leadership Forum
which seeks to revitalize leadership within communities across the
nation. In 1997, Benhamou received the Medaille Habif.
Mr. Benhamou currently serves as chairman of the board of Cypress
Semiconductor and as a member of the board of Legato. He serves on
the board of directors of privately held companies, Intransa and Atrica.
Mr. Benhamou serves on the executive committee of TechNet. In addition
he serves on the board of directors of Stanford University School
of Engineering board of advisors. He serves as vice chairman of the
board of governors of Ben Gurion University and as chairman of Western
Governor's University's National Advisory Board.
Mr. Benhamou, 46, holds honorary doctoral degrees from Ben Gurion
University of the Negev, Widener University and the University of
South Carolina. He has a master of science degree in electrical engineering
from Stanford University and a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from
Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers, Paris.
|
|
Vinton G. Cerf
is Senior Vice President of Internet Architecture and Technology for
WorldCom. Dr. Cerf's team of architects and engineers design advanced
Internet frameworks for delivering a combination of data, information,
voice and video services for business and consumer use. Widely known
as a "Father of the Internet," he is the co-designer of the TCP/IP
protocols and the architecture of the Internet.
In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal
of Technology to Dr. Cerf and his partner, Robert E. Kahn, for founding
and developing the Internet. Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, he was
Vice President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives
(CNRI). As Vice President of MCI Digital Information Services from
1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial
email service to be connected to the Internet. During his tenure from
1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development
of Internet and Internet-related data packet and security technologies.
|
|
Ching-chih Chen
of Boston, Massachusetts, is a Professor in the Graduate School of
Library and Information Science, Simmons College. She is a Fellow
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
|
|
David M. Cooper
of Livermore, California, is Associate Director of Computation at
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received the 1994 NASA
Medal for Outstanding Leadership and Exceptional Service for his pioneering
work on high performance computing.
|
|
Steven D. Dorfman
of Los Angeles, California, is retired Vice Chairman of Hughes Electronics
Corporation. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering
and a recipient of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Award and
Satellite Executive of the Year, 1996. He has served on advisory boards
for the FCC, Department of Transportation, NASA, USIA, National Research
Council and the USC School of Engineering.
|
|
Robert J. Ewald
of White Plains, New York, is Executive Chairman of Learn2 Corporation.
He served on the Supercomputer Performance and Development Committee
of the National Academy of Sciences.
|
|
David J. Farber
is Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunications, School of
Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania. Professor
Farber's career has been focused on the understanding of and the development
of technology in the computer and communications area. He started
in 1956 with a BS in General Engineering from Stevens Institute of
Technology. He started work at Bell Telephone Laboratories, helping
to design the world's first electronic switching system which was
later installed at Morris, Illinois. This system was the analogue
of the ENIAC for today's computer-based telephone systems. He later
went on to do pioneering work in programming languages, resulting
in the SNOBOL programming language, which is a predecessor of many
of today's pattern-match capable languages such as the AWK language
and the UNIX Shell command interpreter. After a period at the RAND
Corp, he left industry to join the University of California at Irvine
(UCI) as a faculty member. At UCI he was responsible for the conceptualization
of the first operational distributed computer system sponsored by
the U.S. National Science Foundation -- the DCS system which was the
first use of client-server ideas, along with the first micro kernel
and the first ring-type Local Area Network. At the University of Delaware,
Prof. Farber collaborated in the creation and operation of CSNET and
the NREN as well as co-authoring the proposal which resulted in the
U.S. Gigabit Testbeds. At the University of Pennsylvania, Prof. Farber
holds The Alfred Fitler Moore Chair of Telecommunication Systems.
Prof. Farber serves on many industrial and government advisory committees,
and is a Fellow of the IEEE. He serves on the Board of Trustees of
both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Internet Society.
|
|
Sherrilynne S.
Fuller of Seattle, Washington, is head of the Division of Biomedical
Informatics, Department of Medical Education, School of Medicine,
Director of the Health Sciences Libraries and Information Center,
and Director of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific
Northwest all at the University of Washington. She is a Fellow of
the American College of Medical Informatics.
|
|
Hector Garcia-Molina
of Stanford, California, is Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner Professor
and Chair of the Computer Science Department at Stanford University.
He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and received
a 1984-1989 NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award.
|
|
Susan L. Graham
of Berkeley, California, is Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California,
Berkeley. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences,
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association
for Computing Machinery, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
|
|
James N. Gray
of San Francisco, California, is a senior researcher in Microsoft's
Scalable Servers Research Group and manager of Microsoft's Bay Area
Research Center. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
|
|
W. Daniel Hillis
of Applied Minds, Inc. in Glendale, California, is Chairman and Chief
Technology Officer. Previously, Hillis was Vice President, Research
and Development at Walt Disney Imagineering, and a Disney Fellow.
Danny Hillis is an inventor, scientist, author, and engineer. He pioneered
the concept of parallel computers that is now the basis for most supercomputers,
as well as the RAID disk array technology used to store large databases.
Hillis co-founded Thinking Machines Corp., which was the first company
to build and market massive parallel computers and RAID disk arrays.
He holds over 40 U.S. patents, and has also written extensively on
technology and its implications. He recently published his second
book, The Pattern on the Stone, in which he explains the basic ideas
that make computers work, and is also the designer of a 10,000-year
mechanical clock. Dr. Hillis is the recipient of numerous awards,
including the Spirit of American Creativity Award for his inventions,
the Hopper Award for his contributions to computer science and the
Ramanujan Award for his work in applied mathematics. He is a Fellow
of the Association of Computing Machinery and a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
|
|
Robert E. Kahn
of McLean, Virginia, is founder, CEO, and President of the Corporation
for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). He is a former member of
the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine and the United
States Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
He is also the recipient of numerous awards including the National
Medal of Technology for his role in the creation and development of
the Internet, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the Marconi Award,
and twice the recipient of the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian
Service Award.
|
|
Ken Kennedy
of Houston, Texas, is Director of the Center for Research on High
Performance Software (HiPerSoft) at Rice University and Ann and John
Doerr Professor of Computer Science. He is a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing
Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers;
a member of the National Academy of Engineering; and in 1995 received
the W. Wallace McDowell Award, the highest research award of the IEEE
Computer Society. He was co-chair of the President's Information Technology
Advisory Committee from February 1997 to August 1999. In 1999, he
was named recipient of the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement
Award; and received the 1999 CRA Distinguished Service Award and the
1999 RCI Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award.
|
|
John P. Miller
of Bozeman, Montana, is Director of the Center for Computational Biology
and Professor of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Montana State University,
Bozeman. He is one of five co-founders of the Journal of Computational
Neuroscience.
|
|
David C. Nagel
of Los Gatos, California is President and CEO of the Platform Systems
Group of Palm, Inc. As CEO, Nagel is creating a new line of business
for Palm, focused on licensing the Palm OS and associated products
to a diverse set of licensees worldwide, including Palm, Inc. The
formation of the Platform Systems Group subsidiary was announced earlier
in 2001 by the Palm board of directors. Nagel remains a member of
the Palm Board.
Prior to joining Palm in September, he was the Chief Technology Officer
of AT&T and President of AT&T Labs. In those roles, Nagel
oversaw the development of a new generation of Internet and other
communications and information services and generally led the company's
investments and efforts in research and development. Nagel also served
as CTO for Concert, the international joint venture between AT&T
and BT.
Prior to joining AT&T, Nagel was Senior Vice President of Apple
Computer, Inc., where he led the worldwide research and development
group responsible for Macintosh hardware, Mac OS software, imaging
and other peripheral products. He is a member of several corporate
boards, is a member of the FCC Technology Advisory Council, and a
member of the Board of Councilors of the UCLA Foundation.
|
|
Raj Reddy of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a Herbert A. Simon University Professor
of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He
is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and President of
the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.
|
|
Edward H.
Shortliffe of New York City, is Professor and Chair of the Department
of Medical Informatics, Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Computer
Science at Columbia University's, College of Physicians and Surgeons.
He is a member of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy
of Sciences, a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics
and of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and has
served on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the
National Research Council.
|
|
Larry Smarr
is Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology and founding Director of the Alliance and the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He is also a Professor
of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and of
the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy
of Engineering.
|
|
Joe F. Thompson
of Starkville, Mississippi, is the William L. Giles Distinguished
Professor of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Aerospace
Engineering at Mississippi State University and was founding Director
of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for
Computational Field Simulation at Mississippi State University.
|
|
Leslie Vadasz
of Santa Clara, California, is Executive Vice President of Intel Corporation,
President, Intel Capital.
|
|
Steven J. Wallach
of Richardson, Texas, is vice President at Chiaro Networks and an
Advisor at CenterPoint Ventures and was Chief Technology Officer of
Hewlett-Packard Company's Convex Technology Center and co-founder
of Convex Computer Corporation. He is a member of the National Academy
of Engineering and serves on the External Advisory Committee of the
Center for Research on Parallel Computation headquartered at Rice
University.
|
|
Irving Wladawsky-Berger
of Westport, Connecticut, is Vice President for Technology and Strategy,
Enterprise Systems Group, at IBM Corporation. He is a founding member
of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National
Research Council and a former member of both the Commission on Physical
Sciences, Mathematics and Resources, and the National Research Council.
|
|
|
