george@nova.npac.syr.edu (George Boyce) (02/03/90)
Below is a copy of the 2/1/90 press release regarding the hiring of
Geoffrey Fox as Syracuse University professor of physics and computer
science and as director of the Northeast Parallel Architectures
Center. I apologize in advance for any advertising hype which may be
mixed in with the important details.
George
- --
George R. Boyce, Systems Engineering Group
NPAC - Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University
george@nova.npac.syr.edu, grboyce@sunrise.bitnet
========
For Immediate Release Thursday, February 1, 1990
Contact: Carol A. Parlin 315/443-3784
PARALLEL COMPUTING EXPERT JOINS SU FACULTY
Parallel computers promise to be the technological "dream
machines" of the 1990s. They operate at very high speeds because they
are constructed with many processors and therefore can solve in
microseconds what would take a person a lifetime to accomplish.
SU is establishing a major educational and research initiative
in computational science beginning today with the appointment of a
world leader in the field.
Geoffrey Fox, will join the Syracuse University faculty as
professor of physics and computer science and director of the
Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC) effective July 1.
Fox's presence at SU will enable the University to expand NPAC
in order to support an educational enterprise, as well as increase the
center's research activities.
"The appointment of Geoffrey Fox exemplifies the University's
commitment to build upon its strengths and strike a balance between
the teaching and research aspects of its mission," said Chancellor
Melvin A. Eggers. "With an eye on emerging technologies such as
parallel computing andthe corresponding rise of disciplines such as
computational science, we, as educators and scientists, will continue
to emphasize the transfer of knowledge from the University to the
community, the state and the nation."
Fox, who currently heads the supercomputing facilities at the
California Institute of Technology--a $3 1/2 million enterprise-- is
the catalyst for the nation's first undergraduate and minority degree
programs in computational science, which will be initiated at SU.
Computational science is an emerging discipline aimed at
bridging the gap between computer science, applied mathematics and
physics. Computation has recently been touted as a third scientific
method, joining the traditional experimental and theoretical
methodologies.
Several additional faculty appointments in computational
science will be made in the coming months that will complement
Professor Fox's work. Initially, these will be in the Department of
Physics and the School of Computer and Information Science.
"A total of 100 employees will be working in and contributing
to computational science at SU," said Ben Ware, interim vice president
for research. "This effort will be supported by an annual budget of
several million dollars, with most of the funding derived from
sponsored research."
The initiative to bring Fox to SU originated with the NPAC
officials, who wanted to build on the strength of the center. NPAC,
which was established in 1987, is funded primarily through the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The center has received
over $10 million in funding to purchase state-of-the-art parallel
computers and tmake them available to researchers at SU and across the
contry. The experiences of researchers with this equipment are being
evaluated with a view toward designing the next generation of parallel
computers.
"Because of the existence of NPAC, we're already positioned in
the forefront of this field," said William Schrader, executive
director of NPAC. "We wanted to take this technological edge at NPAC
and apply it toward an educational enterprise that would include a
strong component of research. The best way to do this was to recruit
someone who is a world class research leader in parallel computing."
Fox, a native of Scotland, has an international reputation in
the field of computational science, and has received multimillion
dollar funding from a variety of agencies. He is well-known among
computer companies that are working to improve parallel architectures
and build the next generation of parallel computers. His interest in
computational methodology let to development of the parallel
architecture called the hypercube. Fox has become a leading expert in
the analysis and classification of complex computational problems and
computer architectures.
Parallel computers perform many tasks or instructions
simultaneously, i.e. in parallel, as opposed to traditional,
sequential computers that perform many tasks in a series. Parallel
computers use many processors to carry out instructions or tasks while
sequential computers use one processor.
In principle, using a traditional computer, which has only one
processor, is similiar to giving one typist 100 pages to type. Using
a parallel computer is like dividing those pages among 100 typists --
with each typing one page, the job is done faster.
The scope of problems that can be studied using parallel
computers ranges from elementary particle physics to weather
forecasting. Parallel computers can:
* take satellite-fed stereo images of mountainous terrain and
produce a detailed contour map of that terrain in less than 10
seconds;
* complete a document search of 15,000 entries in less than
one second;
* simulate the airflow over a proposed design for an airplane
(proposed wing designs are now tested by building a scale model and
placing it in a wind tunnel).
"Applications in parallel computing cut across disciplinary
lines, and there are many other units in the University -- chemistry,
sensory research and psychology, for example -- that will profit from
the expansion of NPAC activities and teh presence of Geoffrey Fox,"
said Ware.
Fox received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cambridge
University in 1967. He conducted research at Princeton University,
the University of California at Berkeley and Cambridge University
before joining the faculty at California Institute of Technology in
1970. He was named a full professor in 1979 and served as dean for
educational computing and associate provost for computing.
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