DATE: Thursday , January 30, 2003
TIME: Noon - 1 pm
PLACE: NSH 3305

SPEAKER:
Roy Levin
Director, Microsoft Research, Silicon Valley

TITLE:
What's Happening at Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley?

ABSTRACT:
Microsoft Research's Silicon Valley Center focuses on the theory and practice of distributed systems, with particular interest in their interplay. The lab has been in existence about 18 months and has a number of projects underway that are representative of the breadth and unique focus of our interests. In this talk, I will present an overview of the role and mission of Microsoft Research, then turn to the particular projects of the Silicon Valley Center.

BIO:
Roy Levin joined Microsoft in August, 2001, to found the Silicon Valley Research lab. From 1996 until he joined Microsoft, Roy was Director of the Compaq's Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, California. Previously, he was a senior researcher in the Center since its founding in 1984 by Digital Equipment Corporation. During those years, he was a primary contributor and project leader for the Topaz programming environment and its microkernel operating system, the first to provide high-performance, light-weight process scheduling and interprocess communication on a multiprocessor workstation. He also was project leader and a primary contributor for Vesta, a software configuration management system embodying novel technology and tools for source control, version management, and building of large software systems.

Before joining Digital, Roy was a Principal Scientist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. He was project co-leader and a principal developer of Cedar, an experimental programming environment for high-performance workstations.Cedar set the standard (c. 1982) for integrated programming environments for algol-tradition languages, incorporating significant advances in language technology, file systems, network communication (rpc), and user interfaces.Roy also was a co-developer of Grapevine, a landmark electronic mail system.

Roy received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and his B.S. in Mathematics from Yale University. He is a member of the ACM, and a former chair of ACM SIGOPS. He is author or co-author of approximately 20 technical papers, books, and patents.

For Further Seminar Info:
Visit http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/