Last week the 4th floor of our building here was invaded by a 6-8-person TV crew and all their voluminous gear that was making a film for PBS showing next year, `2001: HAL's Legacy'. Interviews with Professors Andy van Dam and Eugene Charniak were taped for this project, which compares the achievements in computer science and technology portrayed in the 1968 movie `2001: A Space Odyssey' with what has actually been done. Writer Arthur C. Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick were widely praised at the time for trying to `get the science right'. How closely, the project asks, does ...

At an October 17 luncheon at Brown's Faculty Club, Professor Emeritus Peter Wegner was awarded Austria's Ehrenkreuz (Medal of Honor) for his scientific contributions. (Wegner, born an Austrian citizen, went from there to England as a refugee at the age of six.) The Austrian consul in New York, Mr. Harald Miltner, presented the award and gave a gracious speech describing Peter's life and work in computer science. After lunch everyone adjourned to a reception in CS's atrium, featuring a chocolate cake frosted with a large reproduction of the medal. Congratulations, Peter!

(from the Brown News Bureau)

Brown Computer Science professors Franco Preparata and Eliezer Upfal are working on a method to sequence DNA that would be faster and more efficient than the current technique. They are attempting to improve on an alternative method known as sequencing by hybridization by inserting gaps that act as wildcards in DNA probes

For more information, see the full article at

http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2000-01/00-037.html

In mid-September NSF announced the award of its prestigious Information Technology Research (ITR) grants. The major goals of the program are to augment the nation's information technology knowledge base and strengthen its IT workforce. NSF director Rita Colwell said, `These projects represent major innovations in information technology, rather than routine applications of existing technology.' `This initiative,' said President Clinton in announcing the awards, `will help strengthen America's leadership in a sector that has accounted for one-third of U.S. economic growth in recent years.' Brown Computer Science investigators received two of the only 62 `large' (more than $500 ...

We're delighted to announce that Pascal Van Hentenryck has returned to Brown as Professor of Computer Science after a year and a half at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Accompanying him as Visiting Assistant Professor (Research) is Laurent Michel, Brown PhD '99. His enthusiastic friends and students in the Department all welcome them both back most heartily.

Five students received their PhDs at Brown's May 2000 graduation, and a sixth has finished her PhD since then. Congratulations, all!

Costas Busch, "A Study on Distributed Structures" (advisor: Maurice Herlihy). Costas is now an assistant professor at RPI.

Jose G. Castanos, "Parallel Adaptive Unstructured Computation" (advisor: John Savage). Jose is now on the research staff at IBM Yorktown Heights.

Vasiliki Chatzi, "Integer-Coordinate Crystallline Meshes" (advisor: Franco Preparata). Vaso is now working at Synopsys, Inc. in Mountain View.

Niyu Ge, "An Approach to Anaphoric Pronouns" (advisor: Eugene Charniak). Niyu is also ...

We are delighted to announce that InterTrust Technologies is our newest Industrial Partner; we now have 10 Partner companies. By a happy coincidence, Joe Marconis, who previously worked for EMC and was largely responsible for their joining the IPP fold, recently began working for InterTrust and was responsible for InterTrust's becoming a Partner. Joe is an avid IPP disciple, and we are grateful for his enthusiastic support.

Based in Santa Clara, California, InterTrust is involved with digital rights management technology for the Internet. Their MetaTrust Utility provides a unique approach to commercializing DRM technology. They have recently opened a ...