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 Notkin Succeeds Lazowska as CSE Chair
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Professor David Notkin
CSE Chair, 2001-

Professor Ed Lazowska
CSE Chair, 1993-2001
Professor David Notkin has been named by Dean of Engineering Denice D. Denton to succeed Professor Ed Lazowska as chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, effective September 1, 2001.

Notkin is an internationally recognized expert in software engineering. He received his Sc.B. from Brown University in 1977, and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1984, when he joined the UW CSE faculty. Notkin was named an ACM Fellow in 1998, and was honored by the University of Washington with the Boeing Endowed Professorship in 1999, and with the Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award in 2000. He has recently served as chair of ACM SIGSOFT (the ACM Special Interest Group concerned with software engineering) and as an editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Notkin becomes CSE's 7th chair -- a position that rotates, normally with a 5-year term. Jerre Noe was recruited from SRI to head the newly-created department in 1968, and served until 1976. Hellmut Golde served as acting chair from 1976-1977. Bob Ritchie served as chair from 1977-1983. Paul Young was recruited from Purdue as chair in 1983, serving until 1988. Jean-Loup Baer served from 1988-1993, and Ed Lazowska from 1993-2001.

The Department of Computer Science & Engineering is one of the University of Washington's premiere units. In the past five years, CSE's teaching has been honored with four UW Distinguished Teaching Awards, the UW Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award, and the UW Brotman Award for Instructional Excellence. In 1999-2000, two of the four UW undergraduate medallists were CSE majors, and in 2000-2001, two other CSE majors were recognized with UW's first Rhodes Scholarship in 15 years and with the national Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Award.

CSE's graduate program is consistently ranked among the top ten in the nation, both for computer science and for computer engineering. In the past five years, CSE junior faculty have received seven Sloan Research Fellowships, and CSE students and faculty have spawned ten companies as well as transferring technologies such as WebCrawler (the first comprehensive full-text web search engine), MetaCrawler (the first web meta-search engine), and Simultaneous Multithreading (a computer architecture that is destined to become widespread in the next few years) to existing companies. In 2000-2001, two of the three new Ph.D. graduates honored in the national ACM Distinguished Dissertation Award competition were CSE alumni.

CSE's outreach has been honored with the UW Outstanding Public Service Award, the Seattle Alliance for Educations A+ Partnership Award, and the national R1edu Award for educational technology.

In October 2001, the University of Washington will break ground on the CSE Building - a project that will provide the department with competitive space for the first time in its history. Of the total project cost of $70 million, $40 million is being raised privately (a $7.2 million commitment from Microsoft Corporation was announced recently). In addition, $20 million in endowment funds are also being sought as part of the $60 million Campaign for CSE.

In announcing Notkin's appointment, Dean Denton observed that CSE "has an unusually strong set of leaders, which reflects positively on the past and bodes exceedingly well for the future." Denton thanked Lazowska for his service, noting his "boundless energy and enthusiasm" and commenting that "his leadership has had a strong and positive impact on the UW. It is better because of his efforts."


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