Several sources report that MIT’s Dean of Engineering, Subra Suresh, is to be nominated to be the new Director of NSF.  Previously, Dr. Suresh was chair of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Eric Brewer has won the ACM – Infosys Foundation Award “for his contributions to the design and development of highly scalable Internet services.”  Brewer’s work was a key reason for the success of Inktomi, a search engine pioneer that Brewer co-founded in 1995 and was purchased by Yahoo in 2003.

The ACM-Infosys Foundation Award, established in August 2007, “recognizes personal contributions by young scientists and system developers to a contemporary innovation that exemplifies the greatest recent achievements in the computing field.”

ACM announcement here.  Wall Street Journal article here.

Congratulations Eric!

Chuck Thacker has won the ACM A.M. Turing Award (quoting ACM) “for his pioneering design and realization of the Alto, the first modern personal computer, and the prototype for networked personal computers.  Alto incorporated bitmap displays, which enable modern graphical user interfaces, including What You See Is What You Get editors.  Thacker’s design, which he built while at Xerox PARC, reflected a new vision of a self-sufficient, networked computer on every desk, equipped with innovations that are standard in today’s models.”

ACM announcement here.  Microsoft announcement (a wonderful profile of Chuck) here.  Terrific 6-minute interview on NPR’s All Things Considered here.

Congratulations Chuck, and thanks for being an inspiration to all of us!