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CITI Renamed Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology Rice’s Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI) has been renamed the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology in honor of its founder, Ken Kennedy ’67, who died last year. "Thanks to the intellectual leadership of Ken Kennedy, Rice University was able to stake a claim as one of the nation’s trendsetting academic centers for computational research and education,” said President David Leebron. “We remain saddened by the loss of this remarkable colleague but are immensely grateful that he produced an endeavor of enduring excellence in computer science. It is most fitting that our highly successful multidisciplinary Computer and Information Technology Institute, founded by Ken, should bear his name.” In late 1986, Kennedy, David Hellums (dean of engineering at that time) and Sidney Burrus (then a colleague and
professor of electrical and computer engineering) pitched to the advisory council of the George R. Brown School of Engineering the idea for an institute to promote interdisciplinary research and education in computing technologies, computational engineering and information processing. Kennedy was named the institute’s first director in 1987, and it has grown from its original 30 faculty members and research scientists to more than 120 today. At first rooted in the Departments of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computational and Applied Mathematics, and Statistics, the institute now includes faculty
Professor of the Year When Frank Jones ’58 was in his senior year as a chemical engineering major at Rice, his math professor told him he was going to be a mathematician, not an engineer. That prediction came true, and Jones, the Noah Harding Professor of Mathematics, has been teaching math at Rice for the past 45 years. Apparently, the prediction did not mention how good he’d be at it. In November, Jones was named the 2007 Texas Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The award recognizes professors for their influence on the teaching profession and their outstanding commitment to undergraduate students. Jones was selected from more than 300 top professors in the U.S. and is among winners in 40 states and the District of Columbia. “Frank Jones is in his fifth decade of inspiring students,” said Michael Wolf, chair of the Department of Mathematics. “Like most great teachers, what he does is simple: He works hard at writing lectures that communicate and delivering them clearly, he is available to his students to answer questions, and he conveys his passionate interest in mathematics by example.” Wolf said mathematical education at Rice would have been “wholly different” without Jones. “There are alumni of Professor Jones’ classes at all levels of professional life now, from graduate
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from 17 departments and nearly every school at Rice. The institute’s original research focus on robotics and parallel computation has expanded into digital signal processing, distributed computing, sensor nets, networking, communications, optimization, data modeling and analysis, bioinformatics, nanoengineering and technologies in education. “The institute’s power lies in its ability to look beyond individual faculty members and departments and support the creation of teams that can successfully leverage our key research strengths,” said institute director Moshe Vardi. “Our goals are to be a catalyst for research collaboration across school, department, center and laboratory boundaries and to encourage and develop close partnerships with industry, government and other universities.” The institute’s many successes remain evident at Rice. The institute’s first major spin-off was Rice’s Center for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC), which Kennedy headed and which brought in more than $50 million in research funding over its 10-year life.
After CRPC ceased operations in 2000, Kennedy created the Center for High Performance Software Research to serve as the institute’s umbrella for research in high-performance activities at Rice. Supercomputers that CITI has acquired with multimillion-dollar NSF and industry grants provide a shared resource for the benefit of any Rice faculty members whose research depends on large-scale computing. Other projects are Connexions, founded in 1999, to focus on publishing open-access scholarly content; a graduate fellowship fund at Rice endowed by global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. and named in honor of Kennedy (see “Ken Kennedy Honored with Graduate Fellowship Endowed by Cray Inc.” on Page 15); and several lecture series that bring well-known speakers from industry and other universities to campus to discuss various aspects of information technology as well as the impact of the technology on the humanities and public policy. —B. J. Almond and Patrick Kurp
students to chairs of research departments, and many of them can point to their experience in his class or his office as seminal in their development.” Jones knows the impact that a college professor can have on a student. He said he’s still stunned when he thinks about how confident his math professor, Jim Douglas Jr. ’50, was about the career path that Jones would pursue. Douglas, a distinguished alumnus of Rice, served as thesis director for Jones’ Ph.D. in mathematics, which he received in 1961. Jones’ research specialty is partial differential equations. “An enormous number of physical processes in nature, such as weather patterns and the flow of oil in sandstone, are modeled mathematically by partial differential equations,” he said. Jones wrote the textbook for Rice’s MATH 221/222 course, and he’s taught calculus and a vast array of other courses. He said his favorite class is usually “whatever I’m teaching currently.” Born in Amarillo, the native Texan said he is delighted to be teaching at Rice. “Rice students are absolutely great, enthusiastic and eager,” he said. “My colleagues are friendly and supportive, and the administration tends to leave me alone and not require a lot of red tape. It’s just terrific here.” For the complete list of the 41 award winners by state, visit www.usprofessorsoftheyear.org. —B. J. Almond