The end of an era: Prof. Saburo Muroga retires

Thank you, Judy!continued on p. 14

continued on p. 2

Saburo Muroga grew up inNamazu, Japan, the son of acareer military officer. As ateenager who played theviolin, he aspired to be adiplomat, a fiction writer, or amusician. What he becamewas a giant in the field oflogic design.

He earned his under-graduate degree in electrical

engineering from University of Tokyo during theturbulent days right after World War II. He graduated in1947 with the desire to do research.

Jobs were extremely scarce, and Muroga was lucky toland a job in a small laboratory owned by an enormousgovernment-supported national railroad, which used totest electrical instruments. “Every strange character in

the company, which employed about 442,000, wasgathered there,” he laughingly recalled. “People whohad difficulty with others were sent there.” When hejoined the laboratory, it was converted into a researchlaboratory devoted to bullet train technology, and manyof the researchers had come from the country’s top navaland army research labs, which were being dissolved. “Atthat time,” he said, “people at Bell Labs had published abook on visible speech, analyzed by electrical signals.The book was a compilation of research, and I thoughtthis could be used to develop a speech typewriter.” Heapplied for a patent and began basic research on voicerecognition. Due to lack of support, he was forced to giveup work on the project.

Muroga’s manager left the company to join agovernment agency similar to the American F.C.C., andMuroga followed him there. “But it was a miserableplace,” he said. “We had to make laws and prepare data

Saburo Muroga

Zigrida Arbatsky

After nine years of dedicated service to the department,alumni, and students, Judy Tolliver has taken a newposition as Program Manager with the National Centerfor Supercomputing Applications. She became theconduit between the three groups, connecting people,creating the highly successful Mentor Program, andbeing a valuable resource. And there was Cyberfest!

While Tolliver was here, the department has receiveda 56 percent increase in annual fund gifts—a tremendoussign of your support. Thedepartment’s endowment hasgrown from $351,000 to morethan $8 M, and its first endowedpositions were established withgifts by private individuals: threescholarships, four fellowships,two professorships, and twochairs. And in 2001, we receiveda $32 M gift for a new building.

Retires after 32 years

Judy Tolliversee letter on p.2

Zigrida Arbatsky has seen a lot of changes since herarrival in CS in 1970 as Professor Muroga’s secretary.This was before the arrival of the personal computer; shetyped manuscripts and student’s theses, including thatof Professor David Padua. A terminal hooked to themainframe computer was soon to appear on her deskand with it’s arrival she learned Troff, LaTeX, ED, EX,and Unix. Later when the department switched to PCs,

she switched to the latest softwareevolving as it did. She stillmaintains her pre-PC skills asvarious professors still use the“classics.”

She also helped Prof. Murogawith the department’s library. Forstudents the library was a greatplace to study and had the bestsource of CS books, journals, andtechnical reports not available

Summer2 0 0 2 Alumni News

2 CS ALUMNI NEWS

University of IllinoisCS Alumni News

Editors: Judy Tolliver and KathleenZanotti

CS Alumni News is published twice a year.Deadlines for submissions: March 1 forthe spring issue, October 1 for the winterissue.

All ideas expressed in the CS Alumni Newsare those of the authors or editors and donot necessarily reflect the official positionof the alumni or the Department ofComputer Science.

Correspondence concerning theCS Alumni News should be sent toalumni@cs.uiuc.edu or:

Editor, Department of Computer Science,1304 West Springfield Avenue,Urbana, IL 61801

www.cs.uiuc.edu

The University of Illinois is an equalopportunity and affirmative actioninstitution.

Zigrida, continued from page 1Dear Alumni and Friends,

Working to raise money for theDepartment of Computer Sciencehas been the best job I’ve ever had.Over the nine years that I’ve beencoordinator of alumni relations anddevelopment, I’ve met manywonderful people who share acommon interest—to provide thebest educational experience for thenext generation of students. Alumniand friends across the country haveexpressed their loyalty, commitment,and generosity to the department byopenly sharing their personalexperiences at the university andoffering their opinions about ourprograms, as well as their thoughtson how we can improve.

I sincerely thank all of you whohave made contributions to thedepartment, financially and in otherways. Your support is vital to thefaculty and students who currentlywalk the halls of DCL and who willoccupy our new building, SiebelCenter. I especially thank those ofyou who have started new traditionsby endowing funds to ensure that wethrive for generations to come.

It has been a privilege to work forthe best computer sciencedepartment in the world, andalthough I’m moving on as aprogram director for NCSA, I amhappy knowing that many of ourpaths will cross again.

Again, thank you.

Sincerely,Judy Tolliver

anywhere elseon campus.Zigrida saidthat on anumber ofoccasions shefound signs ofafter hourspartying.

During themid-1980s, the

depart-ment library became part ofthe universitylibrary system. Shehad to renumberand reorder theentire collection. In1990 when thelatest addition toDCL was opened,she helped movethe collection to itsnew home. Herhappiest memoriesare of workingwith students andhelping themlocate material.They in turnbrought her many books, includingscience fiction, books by StephenKing and the Lord of the Rings series,to “lighten” her reading. Sherecollects that her saddest day was in1996 when the collection was movedto the Grainger Library. “Everyone,especially faculty, enjoyed havingmaterials close at hand,” saidZigrida.

“Zigrida was easy to work with.I learned a lot from her and shewas a good source of informationfor the department. She had a greathistorical memory and of courseshe knew exactly what was goingon in the department,” according toRick Henderson, DCL buildingsupervisor.

She plans to continue skiing,which she began when she movedhere in 1965. Last year she wentwith the Ski Club to the French

Alps, and one of her favorite placesis Jackson Hole, Wyoming.“Exercise makes me feel good,” shecommented .

She is moving to New York inJuly to be near her son. She will notstray too far from computersbecause she will bring a recentlyacquired laptop computer with her.But first, she said, she must learnhow to use i t .

Zigrida Arbatsky

DCS Library (1990)

Judy Tolliver with Doug Hilmes,BS 85, and Prof. Roy Campbellduring Illini Reception (1995).

Summer 2002 3

From the corner office . . .A year has quickly passed since

I started as department head. Thesummer is here; time to slow downa little and to reflect on what wasachieved this year and where wego from here.

We have had an exceptionalrecruiting season this spring, witha large number of top candidatesinterested in our department. Eightoutstanding new faculty memberswill join us this fall (see p. 11).

They will strengthen our department in established researcharea and push us into new areas such as informationretrieval and human computer interfaces. Many of thecandidates that turned us down did so because of the lack ofa suitable position for the candidate’s spouse. This is aserious problem for a small place, as two career couplesbecome the norm. The university has programs in place tohelp with spousal hiring, but we must do more and learnfrom the private sector how to handle this issue using jobplacement services or other mechanisms.

Hiring is likely to be more modest next year because ofreduced budgets. The University faces a $40 millionreduction in the state budget, which will be partly offset by a10% tuition increase. Academic units have seen their budgetsdecrease by an average of 6%. Lower cuts have been appliedto units like ours “where priorities of research excellence andmajor instructional responsibilities intersect…” However,tight budgets are likely to be with us for the next few years,and the long-term trend of continued reductions in statesupport is unlikely to be reversed.

This shortfall has been compensated by an increase inalternative sources of funding: federal and industrialresearch funding, tuition, and gifts. I expect this trend tocontinue. A virtuous cycle is at work: our commitment toexcellence enables us to receive funding that supports ourcommitment to excellence.

We are doing very well with federal research funding –last year has seen a marked increase in our income fromsuch funds. While many of our faculty members havefruitful collaborations with industry, I believe that with yourhelp we can do better in attracting industrial funding.Collaborations are important not only because of thepotential revenue; but they also ensure that our researchstays relevant and that we deal with real problems andprovide practical solutions.

Although tuition has increased, our education is still agood bargain. There are sound social and economic reasonsto make high quality education widely available andaffordable, and I wish we could avoid the current inflation inthe cost of education. Unfortunately , this is a broad policyissue over which we have little control.

Our distance learning program continues to be quitesuccessful and provides us with a modest, but steady,income. The support of our alumni and friends continues to

— Marc Snir

be essential in maintaining our excellence (see p.7).The recent rankings from US News and World Report have

brought us good news: we were ranked (again) fifth in thecountry along with the College of Engineering. Our peerscontinue to recognize the high quality of our programs. Ialways take such rankings with a grain of salt because of themany biases that are built into them. However, there aresome useful lessons to be learned.

The first lesson is that size matters: there is a clearcorrelation between size and rank. The department plans tocontinue growing to more than sixty faculty members. Thisgrowth will improve our education with smaller student/faculty ratios and improve our research with critical mass inall key research areas.

Another lesson is that leveraging computer scienceresearch and education activities across the campus isessential. Computer Science at the UI is excellent not onlybecause we have an excellent department, but we also havegreat CS-related research and education in other units: firstand foremost is ECE, but also in Library and InformationSciences or Commerce and Business Administration.

Similarly the relationship between academic departmentsand research centers must also be nurtured. The researchcenters, such as the CSL, Beckman, or NCSA, fulfill animportant role at the university in supportinginterdisciplinary and applied research. Such centers promoteresearch excellence but they have no educational missionand do not contribute directly to the disciplinary strength ofthe departments. There is the risk of an increased separationbetween the research mission of the university, which is thefocus of the research centers, and the educational mission ofthe university, which is the focus of the academic depart -ments. I believe that a stronger interaction between academicdepartments and research centers will benefit both.

I plan to spend significant time next year on improvingour interactions with other departments and researchcenters. I expect that I shall spend much time on the SiebelCenter, as we are approaching the “climax” of its opening inFall 03. We are committed to making this center a uniqueenvironment for IT research and education – with up-to-datepervasive computing technology and with heavyinvolvement of students, faculty, and staff in ensuring thatthis technology becomes fully integrated in the daily textureof our life.

I hope for and expect your help on many of theseendeavors. I look forward to meeting many of you duringmy trips, at alumni gatherings, or when you visit thecampus. I shall have the opportunity to interact more closelywith those of you who serve on our advisory council. Iwould like to hear your opinions and get your help in settingfuture directions for the department; improving oureducation and better preparing our students for their futurecareers; improving our interaction with industry; ensuringthat the Siebel Center will provide a unique experience toour students; and finally, ensuring that our department willcontinue and improve on its proud tradition of excellence.

Marc Snir

4 CS ALUMNI NEWS

Academy Award winner speaks on computer vision

Steve Sullivan

Steve Sullivan, PhD 96 inECE, was on campus in Aprilto give a DistinguishedLecture entitled “ComputerVision and the Art of SpecialEffects.” His talk focused onhow computer visiontechniques are impactingproduction of feature filmssuch as “Star Wars,” “PearlHarbor,” A.I.,” and mostrecently “Minority Report.”While a student here at U of I,he studied under CS Prof.Jean Ponce, focusing on

automatic object modeling, recognition, and surfacerepresentations.

In 2002, he received an Academy Award for TechnicalAchievement for his team’s first project, the ILM Motionand Structure Recovery System (MARS). The system usessophisticated algorithms and user-interface tools toprovide analysis of the motion of the camera and themotion and dimensions of the object in a scene.

Computer vision is the process of recognizing andinterpreting objects through the analysis of their images.Sullivan and his computer vision team of five focus oninterpreting objects and getting the most information outof their images. Instead of using elaborate models, theteam finds better ways to achieve the same effect bybuilding virtual models that are inserted into the scene.They figure out the angles of the shot, make changes inlighting so the model looks natural within the frame, andalso keep track of other objects within the scene. Theyalso work with motion capture using the performance ofsomeone as a basis for their graphics character. Thisprocess adds finer detail, and the graphics characterappears more realistic in the film.

With each film the process becomes better. “In someways its bad because people sort of believe now that youcan just do anything. The shock value is gone,” saysSullivan with a laugh. “They won’t go see a movie justbecause of the effects. We now have to work harder andhave different criteria. There is some interesting stuff in‘Minority Report.’ It’s not a featured piece of the film, butit was interesting from our standpoint and sort of a newlook. There are some potentially big, groundbreakingthings coming up in the future I can’t talk about. Somemovies we are just trying to improve the process and inothers we are trying to do some very central thing.”

So how did he become interested in computer vision?He had a few really good teachers in junior high whowere excited about computers and brought their own PCsinto school. They encouraged interested students to play

around with them. He was immediately attracted to thegraphics and the programming behind them. He receivedhis first computer in 1981, a TRS 80 color computer.“Computers back then were far more accessible tosomeone. You walk up, turn it on, it’s immediately thereand you can start programming right away,” commentedSu llivan. He later bought a working TRS 80 at a garage sale.

He never studied graphics in the art sense and but wasa TA for a CS graphics class. He and his group usescience and technology, not pen and ink, to produce theirrendered images. For example, they used visionalgorithms to generate the Hall of Containment prisonersin “Minority Report.”

Nearing the end of his thesis work, he was stillundecided about what type of job to look for. He waswatching a documentary on how they created the scenesin “Jurassic Park.” Sullivan recognized that they could beusing computer vision instead of manually doing theeffects. He approached Industrial Light and Magic (ILM)with his ideas. They were interested but said that theycould achieve their end goals with their presenttechniques; using 20 people to manually create theimages. He then approached Rhythm and Hues Studios,which had just won a special effects Academy Award for“Babe,” and they were very excited about his ideas. Heworked there for two years developing 3D animation andtracking software. In 1998 he was recruited by ILM andwould later work on “Jurassic Park III” using hiscomputer vision technology.

He and Prof. Ponce are interested in a collaborationthat would be mutually beneficial. ILM would supply thereal-world problems or interesting topics for researchthat come up during their projects and Ponce’s groupwould work on the theory and robust solutions. Sullivansaid that their group does not have the time to developlong-term solutions to their problems but find problem-specific solutions.

Sullivan commented that since winning the AcademyAward he has more freedom and greater input on whichproblems need to be worked on. It is difficult to“convince people who have no technical backgroundsthat it is worth the risk on their very expensive high-profile movie on your technology,” he said. “A lot of thework we see now is more about making somethingappear real than appear spectacular or unreal. The nextbig frontier that everyone is waiting for is digital.”

His advice to students is to take as much math aspossible. He wishes he had taken more. He can teach newstaff the details, but they need a solid base of theory todraw from when working in this area. He said he wasvery pleased that the graphics group is growing and thatit is a critical component to the work being done in manyareas of industry.

Summer 2002 5

2000s

Richard Bernotas , BS 01, wasmarried to Emily Smith last October.He is employed by Strata DesignTechnologies in Champaign as asoftware designer.

Brian Bohl , BS 00, was married lastSeptember to Kym McCarty. He isemployed at Unified Development,Inc., in St. Louis as a systemsconsultant.

1990s

Adam Boyko, BS 99, was marriedlast October to Kelly Kieft. He ispursuing a PhD in biology at PurdueUniversity.

Stuart Kienlen , BS 99, marriedLaurie Thacker last February. He is acomputer analyst with SouthwesternBell in St. Louis, Mo.

David Wellinghoff , BS 97, has beenworking at Intel for five years as asoftware engineer designingmicroprocessors. He recently movedto the broadband products groupand is designing applications anddrivers for DSL modems

Earl Bonovich , BS 96, and his wifeAnne (Estandarte) Bonovich, BSGeology 96, had a baby boy in July2001. They live in Orland Park, Ill.

Chad Phillips , BS 95, married JaneGeier last November. He isemployed by CommWorks, a 3ComCompany in Rolling Meadows, Ill.

Theron Tock , MS 94, is founder andCTO of Neoteris. Before that, he waschief engineer with WebMD, andbefore that he held positions at Sun,MITRE, and Boeing. Neoterisproduces instant virtual extranetproducts.

ClassnotesKevin Wiggen , BS 94, is chairman ofXythos, a company he cofounded in1999. Xythos develops standards-based file access, sharing, andmanagement software. Before that,he was with Oracle and founded itsapplication’s Internet product group.

Kris Powers , PhD 93, is nowassistant professor at Berry College,Mount Berry, Ga. She had been at UISpringfield.

Scott Corley, BS 92, and his wifeMelissa welcomed their newdaughter Catie Clare Corley inDecember 2001. Catie is now famousworldwide, because her picture isbeing used in promotional screenshots of his latest product,AcidImage. You can see AcidImage,and Catie, at http://www.red-mercury.com.

Kelvin Sung , PhD 92, is an associateprofessor in the Department ofComputing and Software Systems atUniversity of Washington at Botham.

1980s

Kevin McFall, BS 89, completed aMBA from the John Sperling Schoolof Business at the University ofPhoenix in March. He is currentlydirector of enterprise applicationdevelopment for the TribuneCompany’s Media Services groupand an events correspondent for theTribune’s BlackVoices.com.

Kent Steffen , BS 89, is president andCEO of Telution, a company hecofounded in 1998 after ten yearswith Andersen Consulting. Telutionprovides software forcommunications companies and isbased in Chicago.

Steven Ashby , MS 85, PhD 88, hasbeen named deputy associatedirector for computing applicationsand research at Lawrence Livermore

National Laboratory.  He isresponsible for overseeing R&Dactivities of nearly 500 computerscientists and mathematiciansworking on a variety of applicationsin the defense, energy, and lifesciences.  He lives in Livermore withhis wife, Maria Elizabeth Ong, andtheir two children, Hunter andHannah .

Wu-Tung Cheng , PhD 85, wasnamed a Fellow by the IEEE for hisoutstanding contributions to design-for-test (DFT) methodologies forsystem-on-chip designs. He iscurrently chief scientist and unitmanager for Mentor GraphicsCorporation’s DFT Division.

Thomas M. Siebel, MS 85, waspresented with the UI PresidentialAward and Medallion in recognitionof his “commitment to excellence insoftware engineering, computerscience research, and graduateeducation and to his continuingcommitment and generosity to hisalma mater.” He received the awardduring the fall meeting of the SiliconValley Roundtable.

Marc Gallo, BS 83, serves as vicepresident, Global Digital Strategyand Development Practice at Unisys.He is working with clients to bringtheir businesses to a collaborative-commerce model using e-businessstrategy and design services.Previously he was CEO of SierraAtlantic and a lead consultingpartner at Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

Mark Tebbe, BS 83, stepped down inJanuary as chairman of Lante, theChicago-based consulting firm hefounded, but will remain with thecompany.

Mark Mahowald, BS 81, is VP,multicast and networkingtechnologies, for Talarian. Beforethat, he was president and CEO ofWhiteBarn, a software

6 CS ALUMNI NEWS

Fall alum eventsThe department will be co-hostingreceptions this fall for area alums atMotorola in Schaumberg, Ill. andIBM in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.Department representatives will giveupdates on CS news and happenings.Invitations will be going out this fall.

October 14, IBMTBA (October/November), Motorola

241 new alumsCampus was a buzz with graduatesand their family and friendsattending the 131st commencementceremony held May 12 at theAssembly Hall. Altogether therewere 241 CS graduates: 175bachelor’s degrees, 59 master’sdegrees (including 15 from theInternet program), and seven PhDs.

As those new alums are walkingout our doors to begin their nextendeavor, new students will bearriving this fall to begin the cycleover again. There will be about 280freshman and transfer students and120 graduate students this fall.

Traps to avoidMax Levchin, BS 97,cofounder and CTOof PayPal Inc., gavethe department’sDistinguishedEntrepreneurLecture in Aprilentitled “Why SoMany Cool Tech

Companies Fail: Ten Traps to AvoidWhen Taking a Neat Idea toMarket.”

Levchin gave reasons for manytech company failures, identifiedtraps to avoid when growing a techcompany, and explained how PayPallearned from early mistakes,overcame missteps, and avoided bigpitfalls to become one of the fewsuccessful IPOs of 2002. All of ourEntrepreneur lectures are archivedon our Web site.

He was recently selected as oneworld's top 100 innovators under age35 by “Technology Review.” EBayannounced that it would buy PayPalin a stock swap worth $1.5 billion.

Mark your calendars for upcomingon-campus fall events:October 18-20 , ACM Reflections/

Projections 2002October 26 , Homecoming (Illinoisvs. Indiana)

development and networkingcompany that was acquired byTalarian. He has held seniormanagement posit ions at LachmanTechnology Group, Rich Inc., andReuters. He was also a member ofthe technical staff at Bell Labs.

Jeffrey A. Miller, BS 78, is VP ofdevelopment for PCTEL, a providerof soft modems and Internet accesstechnology, based in Milpitas, Calif.He led SAFCO Technologies’s testand measurement group for threeyears before its acquisition byAgilent. Before that, he was withMotorola.

1970s

Michael Borman , BS 77, is presidentand COO for Blue Martini Software,an eCRM provider based in SanMateo, Calif. He assumed thisposition in October 2001 after a longcareer at IBM, most recently as VPfor worldwide Unix sales.

Daniel Pitt , MS 73, PhD 79, willbecome the dean of the engineeringschool at Santa Clara Universitybeginning this July. He was formerlya VP with Nortel Networks.

1960s

Tomlinson Holman, BS Communi-cations 68, won a Tech Oscar for2001 for “research and systemsintegration resulting in theimprovement of motion pictureloudspeaker systems. For over 20years, Tomlinson Holman has beeninvolved in the research andintegration of the constant-directivity, direct radiator bass typeof cinema loudspeaker systems.”Holman, known as the creator of theTHX sound system, gave a talk in CSin 1998.

Max Levchin

In Memoriam

John Mullen, BS 73, died at hishome in San Jose, Calif. last June.After graduation, John workedCAC and then attended graduateschool at UIUC. After leavingChampaign, he worked in theareas of network protocols andhigh-speed communication atCommunication MachineryCorporation, Hitachi, and 3Com.Contributions may be made tothe American Heart Association.

Matthew Sinise, BS 00, died inApril. He graduated with honorsand had been an employee ofBridge Transaction Services inCreve Coeur, Mo., and ofReuters. Memorials may bemade to St. Timothy’s EpiscopalChurch in Creve Coeur.

Summer 2002 7

Thank you!The following graduates and friendsof the department have madegenerous gifts and donations duringthe period September 1, 2000 toJuly 13, 2002.

The Computer Science InnovationFund was recently established byMatt Markus, BS 97, and RameshHaridas, BS 96. Each made cashcontributions independently and atpractically the same time. It isquite a coincidence because thetwo happened to have been inbusiness together, as founders ofPrivacyBank.com, now part ofInfoSpace. We are heartened andencouraged that our alumni are asenthusiastic about our newbuilding as we are.

The Computer ScienceInnovation Fund was establishedto insure that the Siebel Center willbe more than a structure to housepeople and things. It will be adynamic environment offering thevery best computing andeducational resources available.The fund will go toward itsinfrastructure, hardware, software,support, and all the vitalcomponents necessary to propel usthrough the future.

Please join us, Matt Markus,Ramesh Haridas, and others whoare committed to computer scienceeducation at the U of I, insupporting this monumentalendeavor. Contact us atalumni@cs.uiuc.edu, or fill out theform on the back of this newsletter,with your gift, to make animmediate contribution.

Innovation Fundestablished

Dean’s Club ($500 or more)

Sally K. and Donald G. Bourdage*Channing B. Brown III*Debra Jo and Ira R. Cohen*Ronald L. and Elena S. DanielsonRoss M. Erlebacher and Susan B. SilverMichael and Lia Faiman*Scott H. FisherMarc A. GalloCharles W. Gear*Harvey W. GendreauVijay S. GuptaWon KimWilliam J. and Carol A. KubitzTso-Kai and Shuen-Hwa LiuDouglas B. MacGregorMarc S. Martinez and Susan A. Price*Barbara M. McCartyR. Douglas RohnSteven M. SalatoThomas M. and Stacey Siebel*David W. SievertCynthia M. Tao and Paolo Aloe

Sponsors ($100 to 499)

Duane S. Andres and Kiran M. PuriStephen W. and Mary Beth BarthMichael W. BerryTodd F. BrandtGary A. BrunellRobert L. BudzinskiGordon M. CollonsJames M. ConradLeslie N. DaleyMark S. DelisiBeth M. DlutowskiJoy L. DorethyTimothy A. FiedlerDaniel L. FriendDonald K. FriesenBradley A. GoodmanDennis G. GrzesiakJames F. HartEdward W. Hennessy IIKurt H. and Dorothy Roy HortonJeffrey R. and Eileen M. JasicaChristopher J. Jenner

Blake S. and Shelly KrassDavid E. La MarJohn H. LampkinSteven T. LauterburgSteven D. LawrenzDavid R. LeisterDaniel R. LestourgeonDavid A. LorberChristopher J. LoveSharad and Rachna MehrotraWilliam F. MitchellJohn A. ModryKeith MorganAaron C. OgrenSue A. OlsonGary P. OswaltGary J. and Susan Q. PaceDouglass Stott Parker Jr.Michael P. Peercy and Suzanne C. KuoDaniel A. PittLeon PresserJohn E. ReiterCarolyn G. RobinsJeffrey J. RomaMitchell RothKent D. SiefkesJoan K. SlotnickKevin J. SmithCharles E. and Sandra ThompsonScott A. TurkSteven K. TurnerHans J. Van SlootenWilliam E. Witnik

Contributors (up to $99)

Martin S. AcksNicholas AirdoChristopher E. BautistaCarl A. and Mary L. BergstromShawn T. CarolanDavid J. Carr and Anne J. GraySteven James CoteRoger G. DouglasColleen T. EnghauserGordon L. FellowsRaymond R. and Barbara P. GerdesRobert K. Gjertsen Jr.Carol A and Fred R. Green Jr.John D. HalburThomas P. HamiltonChi-Yin H. HsuDaniel T. JacksonJorg R. JemelkaRussell C.and Marlo D. JonesKevin M. LillyDale J. Musick

J. Robert NeelyKaren K. PalagiJeffrey L. Rohrer and Joyce Kim-RohrerDavid Mike SavilleRaymond G. SchmidtMichael D. and Suzette D. SchneiderMichael A. SennettRebecca R. SmithDarrell C. StamBarbera E. and James M. SternJohn R. and Martha N. ThompsonKai-Wen and Carolyn M. Tu

8 CS ALUMNI NEWS

Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Fellowship: Mumtaz Ahmad

Bronze Tablet: Michael D. Bond, Joanna M. Francis,Neal K. Groothuis, Mark A. Miller, Jeffrey A. Stoller,and David L. Zanter

Roy J. Carver Fellowships: Lee Baugh, Kirill Mechitov,Jason O’Kane, Donald Schmidt, and Sameer Sundresh

Sara & Louis Cohen Scholarship: Alan Perez-Rathke

Crow, Chizek & Co. LLP Outstanding StudentScholarship: John Thomas Piller

John Deere Scholarship: Mary E. Pacold

Dunn Systems Scholarships: Michael A. Munie andNicole J. Pakiz

Henry Ford II Scholar Award: Svetlana Lazebnik

4.0 Senior: Michael A. Gorczowski

C.W. Gear Award — Outstanding Graduate Award: XueLiu

Outstanding Undergraduate Award: Joseph M. Kelley

Graduate College Fellowship for UnderrepresentedMinority Students: Kenton McHenry

Franz Hohn & J.P. Nash Scholarships: Matthew Ahrensand Hormozd Gahvari

Michael Hughes Software Engineering Awards: AlanBailey, Freidrich Carillo, Joshua M. Michaels, CharliePikscher, Paul Stankus, Edmund White, and Sean LiuXu

ILLIAC Fellowships: Lee Baugh, Kirill Mechitov, andJungmin So

Illinois Distinguished Fellowship: Jungmin So

Knights of St. Pat: Irene Fusman and Nicole J. Pakiz

David J. Kuck Outstanding Thesis Awards: VanishTalwar (MS) and Xiangmin M. Jiao (PhD)

Duncan H. Lawrie Award: Irene Fusman

C. L. & Jane W-S. Liu Award: Svetlana Lazebnik

2001– 2002 Awards

Mavis Memorial Fund Scholarship: Kai Chen

Outstanding Teaching Assistant: Anthony Hursh

John R. Pasta Awards : Benjamin A. Miller and JosephL. Orndorff

W. J. Poppelbaum Memorial Award: Christopher J.Hughes

Siebel Scholars: Bhaskar Borthakur, Albert Chu, HuiFang, James W. Jackson, and Ryan Szypowski

Daniel L. Slotnick Award: John Lloyd Wright

James N. Snyder Awards: Matt W. Hansen andGeoffrey Levine

Spyglass Scholarships: Mary E. Pacold, Jessica Schoen,Gergana S. Slavova, Qihua (Lily) Yang, and Kelly W.Yeh

SURGE Fellowships: Naomi Caldwell and KentonMcHenry

Verizon Fellowship: Can Zheng

William & Ruth Witt Scholarship: Martha N. Teklu

Warren William Young Award: Shawn T. Lindberg

Student Awards

Nicole Pakiz with Bill DunnDunn Scholarship

Joshua MichaelsHughes Award

Mary PacoldDeere & Spyglass Scholarships

James JacksonSiebel Scholar

Martha TekluWitt Scholarship

Jungmin SoILLIAC Fellowship

Summer 2002 9

Professor Michael Heath waspresented with the Campus Awardfor Excellence in Graduate andProfessional Teaching. He wasnominated for the commitment toeducation and enthusiasm that hecarries with him throughout his day.Prof. Heath teaches classes innumerical analysis, a rather

unexciting subject for many, but for his students hebrings a dry sense of humor and the ability to explaindifficult material in an understandable way. Hisexpectations of himself and his students are very high.He is always prepared and undertakes his teachingresponsibilities seriously. His students remarked thathe has an animated and lively lecture style, is anexcellent speaker, and highly motivating. Hiscommitment to education extends beyond theclassroom to his roles as a graduate research mentor,as an author, as the director of the ComputationalScience and Engineering program, and as the directorof the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets.

Jason Zych, lecturer in computerscience, received the 2002 CampusAward for Excellence inUndergraduate Teaching for hisdedication, empathy, talentedteaching and development andrevision of course materials. Zychhas received numerous department

and college awards. He has been named to theIncomplete List of Teachers Rated Excellent by theirStudents . Students have commented that heencourages them to make connections between theclass material and their work experiences; his lecturesare quick, clear, and to the point; he has the abilitythrough his questions to lead students to discoveranswers; and he regularly uses real-world problems aspart of his materials. Zych consistently incorporatesthe latest in teaching technologies to his lectures,experimenting and redefining them to fi t his purposeand to enhance the student experience.

Pair receive majorcampus awards

Peng T. Ong, MS 88, received the College ofEngineering’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Serviceat their convocation held in April. He received the awardfor his vision and leadership in building Interwoven intothe world’s leading provider of enterprise-class contentinfrastructure software. He is founder of the company,which he started in 1995 and took public in 1999.

After successfully launching Interwoven’s TeamSite,he stepped down as CEO, served as chairman of theboard until January 2002, and is now chairman emeritus.When he finds the time, Ong is an angel investor in newenterprises. His advice is sought by many aspiringtechnology entrepreneurs. He currently splits his timebetween Asia and the United States to help nurturetechnology start-ups and to foster collaborative businessopportunities between the two regions. He is alsoworking on his next company.

A previous article on Peng Ong appeared in the winter1999 issue. It is also available at: www.cs.uiuc.edu/news/a lumni /w99/ong.html .

Ong wins alumni honors

Faculty and Staff AwardsDepartment Staff Awards: Barbara Armstrong andChuck Thompson

C. W. Gear Award for Faculty: Vikram Adve

Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff (Finalist): Barb Cicone

Campus Award for Excellence in Guiding Under-graduate Research (Honorable Mention): Dan Roth

Four receive WilletsProfessors Jeff Erickson, David Kriegman, Dan Roth, andJosep Torrellas were chosen by the College ofEngineering to received a Willett Faculty Scholar Award.The award is for faculty members who are in a relativelyearly stages of their careers and are excelling in theircontributions to the university. Each will receive moneythat can be used to help support their research for atleast the next three years. In addition, they will eachreceive a salary supplement of $2,000 per year. Twentyawards were given to college faculty members for thefirst time this year.

Jason Zych

Mike Heath

10 CS ALUMNI NEWS

Faculty notesKevin C. Chang, Sariel Har-Peled, and Yizhou Yureceived NSF CAREER Awards designed to recognizethe most outstanding and promising young scientists andengineers.

John Hart became editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions ofComputer Graphics. He is also editor-in-chief of ACMComputing Surveys.

Dan Reed gave the NSF CISE distinguished lecture,“Advanced Computational Infrastructure and ResearchComputing Infrastructure for the 21st Century: Time toGo Long and Go Deep.”

Dan Roth was made a Fellow at the UI Center ofAdvanced Studies.

Josep Torrellas received the Best Paper Award in theFifth Workshop on Multithreaded Execution,Architecture, and Compilation, December 2001, for thepaper “Prefetching in an Intelligent Memory ArchitectureUsing a Helper Thread” coauthored by Y. Solihin andJ. Lee. He was also reappointed as Vice-Chairman of theInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)Technical Committee on Computer Architecture (TCCA),where he is also a member of its Advisory Board.

In February 2001, the Center for Advanced Research inInformation Security (CARIS) was formed in theDepartment of Computer Science and is headed byProfessor Roy Campbell. Already designated by the NSAas a Center of Excellence in Information Assurance, thedepartment will team up with Savoy-based ArgusSystems Group, a producer of Internet securityapplications best known for its PitBull software. Thefocus of the interdisciplinary center’s research will be onnext generation infrastructure security technologies.

Initial research efforts will focus on operating systemsecurity, wireless security, and products relating to PKIand Smart Card systems. CARIS will operate on existingfunding for security research and bootstrap itself fromthere. It is hoped that working with the private sector willenable faster transition of products from the research labto the market. Said Campbell, “CARIS is a locus forpeople to get together and discuss how to approachsecurity. The government’s producing a lot of differentprograms in security and usually the funding is inspecific areas and attached to trying to develop researchto the point where it’s actually transferred into industry.By having a center, we can affect that.”

For more information see www.caris.uiuc.edu.

Security Center launched

“Early Computers

Combining the administrativeand computer experience ofLouis N. Ridenour, themathematical ability ofAbraham H. Taub, and theelectrical engineeringbackground of Ralph E.Meagher, in 1952 the DigitalComputer Laboratorydeveloped ILLIAC I. The firstdigital computer built andowned entirely by aneducational institution. Itweighed five tons and

contained 2,800 vacuum tubes. The ILLIAC series continued withILLIAC II, a transistorized computer, and culminated in the mid-1960s with the ILLIAC IV supercomputer, the largest and fastestin the world.”

The marker is located at the west doors of DCL. The 57bronze markers, each weighing 75 pounds and mounted onan 8-foot pole sunk several feet into concrete, have beenappearing throughout campus since last summer. Theseinitial markers honor faculty members for whom buildingsare named and others whose achievements have changedtheir discipline.

DCL historical marker

CS website’s designerpens new bookThe new CS website,www.cs.uiuc.edu , owes itslook and feel to designer LukeWroblewski, BFA GraphicDesign 98, BFA Art History 99,MFA Interface Design.Wroblewski heads interface and new media design inNCSA’s communications group as well as runs his owncompany, LukeW Interface Designs (lukew.com). He cannow add “Author” to his business card. His book, Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability (John Wiley &Sons, 2002), is now available nationwide. Unlike mostbooks about Web usability, it emphasizes the visualcommunication techniques that contribute to Webusability, including visual organization principles, andcreating a unified look and feel or personality for awebsite. CS alums will recognize some of thescreenshots used as examples in the book, from the CSwebsite.

CS website design

ILLIAC Marker

Summer 2002 11

New faculty for fallEight new faculty members will join the department thisfall, bringing the total number to 43; 14 professors, 11associates, and 18 assistants. Their research areas includereal-time, OS and storage, and formal methods and newareas including information retrieval and humancomputer interfaces.

Brian P. Bailey, assistant professor,received his PhD from University ofMinnesota in 2002. His research is inthe areas of multimedia design tools,authoring, systems; user interfacedesign, human-computer interaction;ubiquitous computing, social interfaces,and application of Internet technology.He developed DEMAIS, a multimedia

design tool, that enables a designer to rapidly sketchbehavioral design ideas and then transform them into aworking example for clients and team members.

Marco Caccamo , assistant professor,received his PhD in 1998 from ScuolaSuperiore S. Anna in Pisa, Italy. Sincehis graduation, he worked for RetisLab at his alma mater and has been avisiting scholar at CS several times.His major research areas are in real-time and embedded systems,dynamic scheduling, and real-time

support for multimedia. He has been working with LuiSha on a project focusing on wireless sensor networking.

AnHai Doan, assistant professor,received his PhD from the Universityof Washington in 2002. His researchcenters on databases and artificialintelligence, with an emphasis onapplying and extending machinelearning techniques to address dataintegration over the Internet and acrossenterprises. This includes scheme

matching, object identification across multiple sources,schema evolution, user interaction, learning withstructured data, and text mining.

Edgar A. Ramos , assistant professor,received his PhD from UIUC in1995. He has been a researchassociate at the Max-Planck-Institutefur Informatic since 1998. Hisresearch interests includecombinatorial and computat ionalgeometry, randomized algorithms

and derandomization, optimization, and approximationalgorithms.

Grigore Rosu, assistant professor,received his PhD from University ofCalifornia at San Diego in 2000. Hisresearch interests are in the areas ofsoftware: design, semantics andimplementation of programming andspecification languages; automatedsoftware engineering and formalmethods; automated reasoning about

computer systems, applications of logics, theoremproving; and algorithms, (co)algebra, category theory.

Chengxiang Zhai , assistant professor,received his PhD from CarnegieMellon University in 2002. Hisresearch interests are in developingalgorithms for text informationmanagement, including retrieval,filtering, classification,summarization, and mining of text.He is also interested in statistical

natural language processing and its application in textclassification and text mining.

Yuanyuan Zhou , assistant professor,received her PhD from PrincetonUniversity in 2000. She was scientistwith NEC Research Instituteand is currently director ofStorageNetworks, a NEC spin-off.Her research interests includeoperating systems, file systems, andstorage systems, computer

architecture, system support for databases, architecturesupport for systems, distributed systems, and parallelsystems.

Craig B. Zillies , a ss i s tan tp rofessor , r ece ived h i s PhD f romUnivers i ty of Wisconsin a tMadison in 2002. His researchin te res t s inc lude compute rarchi tecture , micro-archi tecture ,opt imizing compilers , prof i l ingmechanisms, and dynamicop t imiza t ion sys t ems .

Changxiang Zhai

Yuanyuan Zhou

Grigore Rosu

Marco Caccomo

Craig Zilles

AnHai Doan

Brian Bailey

Edgar Ramos

12 CS ALUMNI NEWS

e-Fuzion: Reinventing educationPicture yourself in a large classroom where the instructoris lecturing, slides are projected onto a screen, and youare taking copious notes. Sound familiar? How about ifthe lecturer is adding notes and graphics to theslides as she roams the room holding a wirelesstablet? Meanwhile, you are adding your owncomments to these annotated slides on yourcomputer to be saved for later. Twoundergraduates, David Pan (CS) and PatrickBristow (ECE), are making this scenario a realitywith their e-Fuzion software application.

It all began last fall when the pair were freshmentaking CS 225. They both had come from a SouthCarolina magnet school where exceptionally smallclasses were the norm. They wondered how theycould make 225 into a small-class experience forstudents. In September they began developing theapplication using C++ that would allow theinstructor to use custom graphics tools and to cutand paste material from slide to slide, taking lessclassroom time. By November they had switched toC#, based on Microsoft’s .NET initiative, withplatform independence in mind.

Meanwhile, CS lecturer Chad Peiper was lookingfor a better way to communicate and interact withstudents. He had been using a graphics tablet toallow pen-based, projected drawing. The threejoined forces and piloted the software in CS 300 lastspring semester and CS 311 this summer. The mostnotable change in the classroom scenario was offeringPeiper the freedom to move about the room using awireless tablet, allowing him to more directly engage hisstudents.

One of the features of the program allows the teachingassistant (TA) to answer questions posted in the chatspace during class. Questions come from students whomight be reticent about speaking up in class or who don’twant to interrupt the flow with a small question. If anumber of students ask the same question, the TA sendsa note to the instructor indicating the problem and thelecture flow can be immediately modified to take thisinto account. Another feature is the ability to pollstudents during class, which helps the instructor toimmediately gauge if the material is hitting the mark.

“Students are more encouraged to participate. Thetechnology helps break the ice because there is alreadycommunication going on. With so many learning styles,e-Fuzion allows all students to participate in class,whether it be raising their hand or using the chat spacefor a question,” noted Peiper.

Most applications of this type are aimed at thecorporate environment and are too large and complex forthe classroom. e-Fuzion, on the other hand, is a

streamlined program that has been kept small, simple,and can be scaled to work with an individual, smallgroup, or a class of 200. The power in the program is the

use of vector graphics rather than raster graphics, whichhas been known to reduce file sizes by as much as 99%from previous semesters which used NetMeetingWhiteboard. The smaller size means quick loadingduring class and that each student can archive the lecturealong with their notes for later reference. Thirty of thestudents are using pen-based Fujitsu LifeBook computers.

Pan and Bristow are now experimenting with 802.11awireless networking, which gives them greaterbandwidth capability than the 802.11b standard. The trioare also working with NCSA to use the software on theAccess Grid, which supports large-scale synchronousdistributed training on over 100 nodes worldwide. e-Fuzion will be the first pedagogical technology to ever becohesively designed and tailored for use on the AccessGrid. For more information, see: www.e-fuzion.com.

Student’s view of e-Fuzion. Areas include: instructor’s slides and notes (B),student’s clipboard (A), student notes (C), and class chat space (D).

Chad Peiper, David Pan, and Patrick Bristow

Summer 2002 13

The 82nd annual Engineering Open House providedcomputer science students with an opportunity toshowcase projects displaying originality, humor, andhigh-tech know how. This year's theme, Free Your Mind,encouraged participants to think outside the box.Student projects drew grade, high school and collegestudents as well as visitors from the community andacross the state eager to participate in the experience orto view and ask questions about the technologydisplayed within DCL.

1st Place, Just for Fun Sounds and Visions, blendedthe best of SIGGraph and SIGMusic through computer-generated animations with original music and soundeffects. For one visually stunning entry, “Velouria,” thestudent used subdivision surface modeling and hours ofrendering to create a futuristic animated story. Themusic sets the dark, rich tones of the storyline.

1st Place, Original Undergraduate Research, SIGArt,uses the resources of artificial intelligence to createSemanta, which interacts with users through naturalEnglish language, learns from conversations and visualinput, and manipulates its environment through arobotic arm.

1st Place, The Programmers Liberation Organization,created Campus Rumble, a video game that presentedthe classic battle between engineering and liberal artsstudents. The two groups battled it out on a 3D versionof campus.

2nd Place, Free Your Mind MacWarriers’ 3DOSX, is afile system browser that utilizes three dimensions to

view directory hierarchies. Itsupports a full range of filesystem actions, such ascopying, creating newfolders, and ejecting disks.The group provides a freecopy of their browser fordownloading from theirhome page.

3rd Place, OriginalUndergraduate Research —High Dynamic Range ImageEditing/Capture. Thedynamic range of an image is

the contrast of all represented intensities in an image.The SIGGraph image editor will work with the lowdynamic range of the image while preserving the highdynamic range.

How can an engineer learn to dance? The answercould be found at the Digital Dancer exhibit courtesy ofSIGArch. Using advanced digital signal processingtechnology, the Digital Dancer takes arbitrary music and

Crowds take CS challenge at EOHcreates dance stepsfor it in real time.Players dance on astage following thesteps and are scoredon how well theymatch the steps andmusic. The exhibitwon the unofficialaudience award andwas often cited as afavorite.

Visitors could testall their skills first-hand at many of theexhibits. They couldplay withSIGMobile’sLaserBots, whichused a PDA with awireless link tomove a robotaround an arena

and fire on the opponent, or they could use all theirgaming skills on the souped-up ACM’s Gamecube or trytheir hand at SIGSoft’s Guns and Butter, an Internet-based multiplayer economic and military strategy usinga BOA framework.

Other exhibits included SIGMil’s DirectedElectromagnetic Pulse Cannon, which was designed totest the feasibility of executing an attack to crippleelectronic devices; SIGNet’s Emersion, a networkedpresentation program for the UNIX family of operatingsystems, which presented a series of slides from currentphotos of EOH; SIGOps’s SOS ’02, which is aneducational operating system that presents examples ofoperating system functions and implementations.WinDevils’ Advanced SmartHome uses a home’sexisting AC power circuitry to provide a networkedsystem for suchfunctions aslighting andclimate controland monitoring.

For moreinformation onACM and theiractivities, see:www.acm.uiuc.edu.Join us forEOH 2003,March 14-15.

Apprentice MacWarrior

These feet are made for dancing

PLO group readies for campus rumble

14 CS ALUMNI NEWS

Muroga, continued from page 1for making laws. We bought a lot of different radioreceivers on the market and compared their reception.This was boring work and could have been done byanyone.” So he left to join NTT, a communicationscolossus, which employed about 169,000 people. With aresearch lab of about 1,000 researchers, it was the largestin Asia at that time. It was atNTT that Muroga, influencedby Claude E. Shannon’slandmark book, began hiswork in information theory.It did not go unnoticed byMuroga that this particularbook, The MathematicalTheory of Communication, waspublished by the Universityof Illinois Press.

Having reread Shannon’swork several times, Murogasensed that something wasseriously wrong. At the coreof Shannon’s theory was theconcept of channel capacityand that this capacity wasdifficult if not impossible tocalculate. Muroga thoughtotherwise, solving the problem and publishing his ideasin the Physical Society Journal in Japan. This immediatelygarnered Muroga some measure of fame.

Muroga decided to spend a summer, supported by aFulbright grant, at the famous MIT, so he left Yokohamaon a 13-day voyage by cargo ship to San Francisco and a3-day train trip to Boston, drinking Coca Cola for the firsttime. He was hired as a research assistant by Robert M.Fano, who was renowned for his work in informationtheory and was the first director of Project MAC (now theLaboratory of Computer Science).

Muroga visited Illinois for the first time to meet withProfessor Dave Muller, who had developed a new errorcorrecting code which ran during transmission. “I noticedthen,” said Muroga, “a big difference between Illinoisand MIT in terms of professors’ attitudes towardstudents. Illinois professors were nicer, they spent moretime with students, and advisers were more accessible.”Because of his visa restrictions, Muroga had to return toJapan in the fall. This time he took a passenger ship, but itstill took 13 days.

When Muroga arrived back in Japan, he was acomputer celebrity—the first Japanese scientist ever touse a big computer, the ILLIAC. “At that time,” he noted,“there were only a half dozen computers in the U.S., andonly the ILLIAC was available for education. Illinois wason the frontier of education with the latest technology.”

Japan, on the other hand, had only three or fourcomputers, all built by older Japanese people who basedtheir designs on what they read in technical journals.They built them, but they didn’t use them, Murogapointed out, because no one knew how to writeprograms. He was a hero in the sense of having been an

actual user of a computer.“Every week, I went to NECto teach the basic concepts ofcomputer science,” he said,“starting with binarynumbers. I had a small class,attended by the best youngengineers, one of whom laterbecame vice president of NECin charge of software.” Thatwas Yukio Mizuno. Muroga’spopularity grew. His phonewas ringing every fiveminutes. He was asked togive lectures and writearticles. He was becoming toobusy, and by that time he hada young family to tend.

A Japanese inventioncalled the Parametron, a new

type of logic gate consisting of an inductor, capacitor, andresistor, had just begun appearing in Japanese computers.An alternative to the unreliable early transistors, manypeople were excited about the Parametron, includingMuroga’s manager at NTT. But Muroga found theParametron to be too slow and declared the technologywas hopeless. This led to friction, corporate politics wereinsurmountable, so he decided to take a break by leavingJapan for a few years.

In 1960, Muroga joined IBM Research in YorktownHeights, N.Y. Labeled as unpatriotic, he was the first of aperceived Japanese brain drain. During the same year,Leo Esaki, the 1973 physics Nobel Prize laureate, leftSony to join IBM. After several years at IBM, Murogaembarked on a career in academia where he could teachand conduct research in logic design; finding his true calling.

By this time, in 1964, Muroga had gotten to knowmany people at Illinois, so it was a natural place to come.He intended to stay for three years and return to Japan. “Iwasn’t sure I could survive in this country,” he recalled.“But this place was really nice and comfortable, like aparadise. I ended out staying 38 years. Because of thestrong support of the department, I had really goodresearch partners, students, and visiting scholars.” Manyof these visiting scholars came from Japan, and Murogabecame a sort of ambassador between Japanese andAmerican computer scientists.

Saburo Muroga, as a visiting researcher from NTT in1954, with Dave Muller and ILLIAC I.

Summer 2002 15

$1,000 $500 $100 Other

The gift is: unrestricted student scholarships Innovation Fund Other

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I authorize the U of I Foundation to collect my gift in the amount above through: Visa MasterCard Amex Discover

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Please make your check payable to UIF/CS Department.Return form and your check to:

University of Illinois FoundationP.O. Box 3249Champaign, IL 61826-9916

Your gift is tax deductible as allowed by law.

Muroga’s research flourished at Illinois. In Japan, hehad developed a new type of design theory calledthreshold logic, which formed the basis of his landmarkbook, published in 1971 by John Wiley. The book, longout-of-print and fetching high prices in the used bookmarket, is currently enjoying resurgence among neuralnetwork researchers whose ideas essentially extend thenotion of threshold logic. A threshold logic circuit, whichis characterized by inequalities, is a departure fromtraditional logic design theory, i.e., switching theory. Inthreshold logic, traditional Boolean-algebraic gates, suchas AND gate, and different types of gates, such as NANDgate, are treated as unified by inequalities. Murogadevised a way to minimize the number of logic gates in athreshold logic network and came up with the importantconcept of integer programming logic design. Thisintroduced, for the first time, the concept of an absoluteminimization of the number of gates or connections in alogic network into switching theory. Extending thisnotion, with his student, Hung-Chi Lai, parallel adderswere designed with a minimum number of NOR gates,no matter how many bit positions the adders have, thussolving a problem known to be difficult. Another logicminimization method that Muroga and visiting scholarYahiko Kambayashi developed is the transductionmethod, which was adopted as the de facto industrystandard by major CAD companies including IBM,Synopsis, Cadence, and Mentor Graphics.

In addition to his research, Muroga is known for thementoring of his graduate students, many who have goneon to extremely successful careers in industry and

academia. “The success of my students has been mostrewarding,” he said, referring to them as hisbrainchildren. His weekly lunches with his graduatestudents and visitors are a thirty-year tradition. Aworkaholic, Muroga once read a dissertation whilestanding in line at Disneyland. He keeps current with thelatest technologies by reading countless articles, whichhas been good for both his teaching and his investments.

Muroga’s name will live on in the department in theform of two endowed positions named in his honor.Former Dell executive Doug MacGregor, MS 80,established the Faiman and Muroga Professorship, nowheld by Professor Marc Snir, and former Toshibaexecutive Shigenori Matsushita, MS 63, established theMuroga Fellowship, which will be awarded for the firsttime next fall.

During his retirement, Muroga plans to finishsupervising his remaining PhD students and to revise hisVLSI system design book, which was published twentyyears ago. Opera and Japanese history occupy his leisuretime. Anyone who has been in his office in DCL knowsthat he likes to collect things, in this case, mountains oftechnical papers and journals. At home, he collects itemsof a different sort: Japanese antiques, art glass,engravings, and glass paperweights. Muroga has twosons and two daughters. (One son, Eisuke Muroga, is alsoan Illinois educated computer scientist, BS 80, PhD 90.)His wife, Yoko, has put in countless hours of volunteerwork in the local schools and taught calligraphy at theuniversity. They live in Urbana.

Yes, I want to help computer science!

Watch the timelapse construction video at:www.cs.uiuc.edu

It seemed like forever that there was a hole in the ground. Now the building is taking shape with beams rapidly filling the skyand a roof over head. It is being filled in with floors, ductwork, and concrete blocks. What will we fill it with? See p. 7.

University of Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign1304 West Sprinfield AvenueUrbana, IL 61801