|
|
CONTACT: Anne P. Wilson
IMMEDIATE
1999 NATIONAL MEDAL OF TECHNOLOGY NOMINATED BY THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY (ACM) Two ACM Fellows -- Robert W. Taylor, Raymond Kurzweil -- Also Receive Honor New York, Feb. 8, 2000...The ACM congratulates Glen J. Culler on being a recipient of the 1999 National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor for technological innovation. Dr. Culler was nominated by ACM for pioneering leadership in multiple branches of scientific computing. His perception, inventions, and applied contributions have created sound and image techniques that provide the foundation for human communications systems. E-mail, programmable calculators, function keys and voice message systems are a few examples of technologies that are the direct outgrowth of Glen Culler's innovative concepts. His accomplishments in networking, signal and speech processing, and computer architecture provided much of the foundation on which today's computing environment has been built. Robert Taylor and Raymond Kurzweil, two ACM Fellows, also received the National Medal of Technology. In 1978, Kurzweil won ACM's Grace Murray Hopper Award. Taylor was one of the 1984 winners of the ACM Software System Award. Charles H. House, Intel Dialogic Division, EVP, Research, and Past President of the ACM, said, "It is especially fitting that Glen Culler has been named by the President for this prestigious honor. His foresight and energy helped produce key components and products in large technology companies. Glen's work on speech digitizing, for example, was instrumental for engineers at Digital Sound and Spectron Microsystems, now part of Unisys Computers and Texas Instruments. Earlier work in the same area has helped usher in the modems (via North American Rockwell) that allow us all to connect to the Internet, as well as cellular telephones for our mobile society." "His reach in industry was large," House continued, "but I also found this true at the University of Calif. at Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he was on staff since the '50s. UCSB's incredible facilities and the interdisciplinary nature of the campus research programs are a testament to Glen's work. He has been a catalyst for how differently this university approaches research into meaty questions that cross traditional boundaries of departments on campus." Dr. Culler was a faculty member at UCSB from 1959 to 1969. Trained as a mathematician at Berkeley and UCLA, he incorporated computational aspects of applied mathematics and physics in his profession. The Interactive UCSB Online System Dr. Culler created was the primary reason the University was chosen as one of the four original sites for the ARPAnet, now the Internet. While on leave of absence from UCSB in 1962, Dr. Culler was Assistant Director of the Computer Research Lab at Ramo-Woolridge. In collaboration with Dr. Burton Fried, he designed and directed the installation of the first mathematically oriented online computer system. A subsequent version of this system was designed for the Bunker Ramo Corp., and is now known as the "Culler-Fried System." Dr. John R. White, ACM Chief Executive Officer and former student of Dr. Culller said, "Glen made absolutely fundamental contributions to interactive , graphical computing. The Culler-Fried System took time-sharing to a new level of personal, interactive problem-solving." In 1969, Dr. Culler founded his own company, Culler Harrison, Inc (CHI), where he developed the patent and the design that became the FPS array processor. In 1985, his company's name was changed to Culler Scientific Systems, a company which initially specialized in the design of hardware for signal-processing applications. Those designs led to VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) architecture, considered to be the breakthrough beyond RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers). Among other innovations, Culler Scientific pioneered a revolutionary design for scientific computing -- the first personal supercomputer. Dr. Culler holds six patents and has authored numerous articles on such topics as interactive, mathematically-based online systems; networked computer systems; digitizing of sound for transmission over the ARPAnet; and computer and chip architectures. In addition to the National Medal of Technology, Dr. Culler's awards and honors include Member, Science and Engineering Board, the National Academy of Sciences; Invited Specialist to Project MAC to initiate ARPA online computing activities; Invited Guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences; Invited Visiting Professor at the "World Physics Institute," Trieste; Honoree, "Glen Culler Symposium Day, UCSB." Founded in 1947, ACM (www.acm.org) is the world's first educational and scientific computing society. With more than 80,000 members worldwide, a dynamic series of authoritative publications, a wide range of special interest groups (SIGs), and an outstanding array of conferences, workshops and forums, ACM is a world-class resource for the entire technology field. |
