PANEL: Software Research Twenty Years On

Speaker Details

Judith Bishop is Director of Computer Science at Microsoft Research, based in Redmond, USA. Her role is to create strong links between Microsoft’s research groups and universities globally, through encouraging projects, supporting conferences and engaging directly in research. Her expertise is in programming languages and distributed systems, with a strong practical bias and an interest in compilers and design patterns. She initiated the Software Engineering Innovation Foundation (SEIF) and is working on a new way of running programs in browsers (especially F#). After obtaining her PhD at the University of Southampton, Judith had a distinguished background in academia in South Africa, with visiting positions in the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy and the USA. She has over 95 publications including 15 books on programming languages that are available in six languages. Judith serves frequently on international editorial, program and award committees and is known for running successful Summer Schools. She was co-chair of ICSE 2010, and is currently co-chair of TOOLS 2011. She will also help lead the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in July. She is active in IFIP WG2.4, the ACM and the CRA. In 2009, Judith received the IFIP Outstanding Service Award and in 2006 the IFIP Silver Core Award 2006. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and the Royal Society of South Africa.

As corporate vice president of the External Research Division of Microsoft Research, Tony Hey is responsible for the worldwide external research and technical computing strategy across Microsoft Corporation. He leads the company’s efforts to build long-term public-private partnerships with global scientific and engineering communities, spanning broad reach and in-depth engagements with academic and research institutions, related government agencies and industry partners. His responsibilities also include working with internal Microsoft groups to build future technologies and products that will transform computing for scientific and engineering research. Hey also oversees Microsoft Research’s efforts to enhance the quality of higher education around the world.

Before joining Microsoft, Hey served as director of the U.K.’s e-Science Initiative, managing the government’s efforts to provide scientists and researchers with access to key computing technologies. Before leading this initiative, Hey worked as Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science; and, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Southampton, where he helped build the department into one of the most respected computer science research institutions in England.

His research interests focus on parallel programming for parallel systems built from mainstream commodity components. With Jack Dongarra, Rolf Hempel and David Walker, he wrote the first draft of a specification for a new message-passing standard called MPI. This initiated the process that led to the successful MPI standard of today.

Hey is a fellow of the U.K.’s Royal Academy of Engineering. He also has served on several national committees in the U.K., including committees of the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Science and Technology. He was a member of the British Computer Society, the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and the Institute of Physics.

Tony Hey also has a passionate interest in communicating the excitement of science to young people. He has written ‘popular’ books on quantum mechanics and on relativity.

Hey is a graduate of Oxford University, with both an undergraduate degree in physics and a doctorate in theoretical physics.

Peter Lee joined Microsoft as a Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director of Microsoft Research Redmond (MSR-R) in September 2010. He comes to Microsoft from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he served as the founding director of the Transformational Convergence Technology Office. DARPA is the principal agency within the U.S. Department of Defense for research, development and demonstration of high-risk, high-payoff projects for the current and future combat force. In this role, Peter was responsible for developing and implementing the strategic vision and technical plans for a new office in support of DARPA’s mission: to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming national security by sponsoring revolutionary research, bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use. Prior to DARPA, Peter was a professor and head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), having also served briefly as the Vice Provost for Research. He joined the CMU faculty in 1987, after completing his doctoral studies at the University of Michigan.

Peter is an active researcher, educator, administrator, and servant to the academic community. His research contributions lie mainly in areas related to the foundations of software reliability, program analysis, security, and language design. He is a former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association and its Government Affairs Committee. He is the author of two books, authored or co-authored more than 50 refereed papers, and has advised or co-advised 14 completed Ph.Ds. Peter has received numerous awards for his research, including the Special Interest Group on Operating Systems Hall of Fame Award for the most influential paper from OSDI; the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Programming Most Influential Programming Language Design and Implementation Paper; the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence in Computer Science for Proof-Carrying Code; and the 1994 Herbert A. Simon Award for Teaching Excellence in Computer Science.

Date:
Speakers:
Judith Bishop, Tony Hey, Andrew Herbert, Andrew Blake, and Peter Lee
Affiliation:
MSR, Microsoft Research