Communications of the ACM
2016 Tech Impact Champion Announced: Ed Lazowska to Be Honored
Seattle Business magazine has named the University of Washington's Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering, Ed Lazowska, as its 2016 Tech Impact Champion.
Credit: Seattle Business
In advance of its annual Tech Impact Awards event next month, Seattle Business magazine has named Ed Lazowska as its 2016 Tech Impact Champion. The award recognizes a lifetime of work building up the University of Washington (UW)’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering into one of the nation’s top 10 programs; leading the UW eScience Institute to help scholars in fields ranging from astronomy to biology take advantage of data analytics; and tirelessly promoting a vibrant regional tech industry.
Tech Impact Champions are chosen not only because of their achievements in technology, but also for championing the region’s broader tech sector. Past inductees in Seattle Business magazine’s Hall of Technology Champions, previously called Lifetime Achievement Honorees, are John McAdams, former CEO of F5 Networks; Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft; Jeremy Jaech, cofounder of Aldus and Visio and chair emeritus of the Technology Alliance, and Tom Alberg, cofounder of Madrona Venture Group.
When Lazowska arrived in Seattle 39 years ago as an assistant professor, both the University of Washington and the region were very different places. In computer science, he was the newest of only 13 faculty members. The region’s tech industry largely consisted of Boeing, Fluke and Physio-Control. Microsoft at the time was still a dozen people in Albuquerque.
Today, the UW’s Computer Science & Engineering Department rivals Stanford’s and Carnegie Mellon’s for attracting tech talent and major research — accomplishments that Lazowska helped bring about. As the university’s Bill and Melinda Gates department chair, his effort to recruit leading data scientists included personally reaching out to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who provided $2 million to endow two professorships and personally met with researchers. A decade after leading fundraising to build the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering, he is doing so again to build a new CSE facility that will help double the center’s capacity.
From Seattle Business
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