Ken Kennedy academic records

Ken Kennedy attended Rice University, receiving a B.A. in mathematics (summa cum laude) in 1967. He pursued graduate studies at New York University, where he earned a M.S. in mathematics in 1969 and a Ph.D. in computer science in 1971. He returned to Rice University in 1971 to join the faculty of the Mathematical Sciences Department, rising to the rank of professor in 1980. He founded the Rice Computer Science Department in 1984 and served as its chair until 1988. He was named the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science in 1985. In 1997, he became the first John and Ann Doerr Professor of Computational Engineering and, in 2002, he was promoted to University Professor. From 1997 to 1999, he served as Co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) .

Professor Kennedy founded the Rice Computer and Information Technology Institute in 1987 and served as its first chair. In 1989, he established the Center for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC), a NSF Science and Technology Center, and directed it throughout its lifetime. He directed the NSF-supported Virtual Grid Application Development Software (VGrADS) Project, a collaborative seven-institution research effort focused on application development support for computational grids. He was also the project director of the academic partner contract for the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute (LACSI), which is headquartered at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He directed or co-directed four ongoing multi-institutional consortia: the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute (LACSI); the NSF-sponsored Virtual Grid Application Development System (VGrADS) project; the Gulf Coast Center for Computational Cancer Research (GC4R); and the Houston BioGrid consortium.

Kennedy's research interests included parallel computing in science and engineering, scientific programming environments, and optimization of compiled code. His last work fell into four main project areas: the Telescoping Languages Project; the Grid Application Development Programming Tools effort; research on Compilers and Tools for Scalable Scientific Computing; and the Massively Scalar Compiler Project. He published two books and over two hundred technical articles on programming support software for high-performance computer systems. Over his career, he supervised thirty-eight Ph.D. dissertations and he directed the construction of several substantial software systems for programming parallel computers, including an automatic vectorizer for Fortran 77, an integrated scientific programming environment, compilers for Fortran 90 and High Performance Fortran, and a compilation system for domain languages based on Matlab.

Professor Kennedy was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1990. He was named a Fellow of the AAAS in 1994 and of the ACM and IEEE in 1995. In 2005, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In recognition of his achievements in compilation for high performance computer systems, he was honored as the recipient of the 1995 W. W. McDowell Award, the highest research award of the IEEE Computer Society. In 1999, he was named recipient of the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award, the third time this award was given.

Professor Kennedy's service to the national community includes time as member (1997-2001) and co-chair (1997-99) of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). For his leadership in producing the PITAC report, "Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Future," he received the Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award (1999) and the RCI Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award (1999).

Kennedy regularly taught two courses in the Computer Science Department: Computer Science 515 (Advanced Compilation for High Performance Computers) and Computer Science 412 (Compiler Construction). Kennedy also originated Computer Science 314 (Applied Algorithms and Data Structures) and taught it for several years.

Ken Kennedy died after a long battle with cancer, Feb. 7, 2007. "Rice has lost one of its great intellectual leaders and a great human being," Rice President David Leebron said. "Ken Kennedy early on realized the power of computers to address real problems that confront people and the Earth. He leaves a great legacy for Rice and for mankind."

Excerpted from Ken Kennedy home page at Rice University, http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ken/ and news feature http://engr.rice.edu/newsletter/spring07/storypages/feature_story05.html, accessed Feb. 2, 2009.