ATLANTA (July 19, 2006)--College of Computing distinguished faculty and staff were invited to attend the 2006 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit this week at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington. The Summit is the premier opportunity for academic researchers and teachers to join with Microsoft researchers and product group engineers and architects for in-depth presentations and discussions of computing problems and research trends.

This year’s theme was "Computing at the Center of Transformation," and opened with a plenary session focusing on meeting the technical challenges of the future, featuring: Craig Mundie, Chief Technical Officer for Microsoft; Dan Mote, President of the University of Maryland; Lucy Sanders, CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT); and Richard Russell, Associate Director of the Office of Science and Technology. Richard Newton, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley served as moderator.

As in years past, the conference brought over 350 academics from 175 leading institutions here and abroad, while sessions focused on research and advances in areas such as security, human-computer interaction, robotics, gaming, bioinformatics, eScience, digital inclusion, software engineering, and technologies for education. As a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress, the following College of Computing attendees were honored to make their contributions to this year’s Summit:

--Tucker Balch, associate professor and director of the Institute for Robotics Research
--Aaron Bobick, professor and chair of the College’s Interactive & Intelligent Computing (IIC) division 
--Keith Edwards, associate professor and ubiquitous computing expert
--Richard Fujimoto, professor and chair of the Computational Science & Engineering (CSE) division
--Mary Jean Harrold, NSF ADVANCE professor of computing
--Mary Alice Isele, director of development
--Elizabeth Mynatt, associate professor & director of the Graphics Visualization, & Usability (GVU) Center
--Stefany Wilson, director of communications

For more information on the 2006 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, click here.
To view the live plenary session, click here.