Distinguished Engineering Alumni

The Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award was established in 1966 to honor outstanding graduates and friends of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Each year, the award is given by the Engineering Advisory Council to individuals who have distinguished themselves through their outstanding personal qualities, knowledge and significant contributions to their fields. Awards are presented at the Engineering Awards Banquet held each April.

Awards are made in the following categories: Education, Research and Invention, Government Service, Industry and Commerce, Private Practice and Special, a category honoring deserving recipients with careers outside the listed categories or who are not graduates of the College.

The following Distinguished Engineering Alumni Awards have been given for Computer Science:

Lloyd D. Fosdick

As professor emeritus and founding chair of the Computer Science Department at CU-Boulder, Lloyd Fosdick has had a formative and continuing influence on program development in this increasingly important field.

He led the development of CU-Boulder's doctoral program in computer science, served as principal investigator on the department's first large infrastructure and research grants, and brought in many top quality faculty who remain in the department today.

His personal integrity and attention to the value of teaching excellence also set the tone for the department, colleagues say. In addition, Dr. Fosdick is responsible for bringing the department into the College of Engineering and Applied Science where it found more support than in its former home in the College of Arts and Sciences.

With a doctorate in physics from Purdue University, he began his academic career as a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1957. Shortly afterward, he became a member of that university's newly formed Department of Computer Science.

"In my first tour at Illinois, I got a demonstration of the ILLIAC [one of the first high-speed automatic computers], which had just been built there. It was love at first sight," Dr. Fosdick recalls.

After chairing the committees that designed both the graduate and undergraduate programs at Illinois, he spent two summers on the CU-Boulder campus as part of a partnership with the College of Engineering at Illinois. At that time, CU had an Institute of Computer Science and offered a master's degree in computer science, but it had neither a PhD, nor an undergraduate program.

Dr. Fosdick came to CU in 1970 as chair of computer science and served for eight years, stepping down in 1978 to rededicate himself to teaching and research. He again served as chair when called upon from 1985 to 1990.

A dedicated teacher with an international reputation in scientific computing, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965 to study at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and also was named a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 1995.

His research interests include numerical computation, software tools, and parallel computing. He has publications in all of these areas, as well as some early papers in computational physics. He also did early, classified work on using computers coupled to radar systems to track aircraft from shipboard and wrote software and documentation for the ILLIAC.

Dr. Fosdick lives in Boulder, and his son is a CU graduate. His wife, Erica, is deceased.

Lori A. Clarke

Lori A. Clarke is a renowned powerhouse in the field of computer science, specifically in the area of software engineering.

After earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1969 from the University of Rochester, she began her career first as programmer with the University of Rochester School of Medicine and then the National Center for Atmospheric Research, before continuing her education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, earning a doctorate in computer science in 1976. Of graduate school at CU, she says, "It was here that I first experienced the excitement of doing research -- the skiing, hiking, and biking were an added bonus."

She joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts in 1975, where she is now a professor. Clarke's contributions to the field are focused mainly on improving software quality through testing and analysis. Many peers credit her with mentoring a number students and professionals who have contributed positively to computer science. She also serves as an excellent role model for female students, recruiting and retaining women in computer science and the information technology profession.

The quality of her research has been recognized by the Association for Computing Machinery with her election as Fellow in 1998 and by the University of Massachusetts as recipient of the Chancellor's Distinguished Faculty Award in 1991 and Faculty Fellowship Award in 1993.

Clarke shares her expertise, serving as keynote speaker at major conferences. She was selected first as program co-chair and then general chair of the respective 1992 and 2003 International Conference on Software Engineering.

Her professional activities are numerous, including service to the Computing Research Association Board of Directors and subcommittees, the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Software Engineering as chair and in other positions, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Publications Board and editorial posts, and the National Science Foundation Computer and Computation Research Advisory Board.

She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Leon Osterweil, former faculty of the computer science department at CU. They have three children, Brian, a recent CU graduate, Amber, and Justin.

Lucinda M. (Lucy) Sanders

Lucinda M. Sanders' career in computer science has been marked by outstanding technical and management contributions to industry, as well as extensive service to the University of Colorado and other organizations.

First earning a computer science bachelor's degree in 1975 from Louisiana State University, summa cum laude, Sanders completed her master's degree from CU-Boulder in 1978.

She led a productive career with AT&T Bell Labs, focusing on the development of innovative communications systems, including multi-media, Internet commerce solutions, and engineering network technologies, and leading hundreds of research and development software specialists across the world. She also worked extensively with customers and sales and service, making numerous keynote presentations. In 1996, Bell Labs awarded Sanders the prestigious Bell Labs Fellow Award, recognizing her for technical excellence in software architectures and participation on teams creating first-to-market solutions for enterprise PBX systems, multimedia communication systems, and call centers. She also is the recipient of many internal Bell Labs awards, including the Partner of Choice, Trail Blazer, Touch Award, and the Bell Labs President's Silver Award.

Sanders continued her success as chief technology officer of Lucent Technologies' CRM division and then as R&D vice president of Avaya Inc., earning industry recognition in both positions. From her computer science research advancements, she holds four patents in communications software.

In 2001, she became executive in residence for the CU Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (ATLAS) Institute, helping to prepare students for lives and leadership careers in the networked information age. Among many initiatives Sanders has spearheaded through ATLAS, she co-founded and fosters the National Center for Women and Information Technology, develops the research relationship between CU and Avaya in the area of speech recognition, and has worked to evolve a broad academic partnership between CU and Dillard University.

Industry and community fellows alike respect Sanders for the energy she gives to mentoring associates and to improving the community in which she lives. Many Community, education, and corporate boards all benefit from Sanders' leadership, expertise, and drive. In 2000, the YWCA of Silicon Valley recognized her community outreach and business leadership with the Tribute to Women in Industry Award.

Sanders lives in Boulder with her husband, Bruce, a faculty member in computer science at CU. They have two sons, Zack, who attends CU, and Casey.

David H. Haussler

David Haussler was on the computer science faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz when he introduced hidden Markov models for protein sequence analysis, developed a kernel function from the profiles to be used in support vector machine training, and played a leading role in assembling the human genome sequence. His work became a key component of the international collaboration to complete the reference sequence, and his research group has made continuing contributions to the discovery of information in the sequence, such as finding the genes and characterizing the evolutionary properties uncovered by comparing the mouse and human sequences.

Haussler is currently a professor of bio-molecular engineering at UC-Santa Cruz, an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a consulting professor for the Stanford Medical School and the University of California San Francisco Biopharmaceutical Sciences Department, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), member of the nominating committee for the International Society for Computational Biology and a member of the American Society of Human Genetics. He also holds the UC Presidential Chair in Computer Science at the Santa Cruz campus.

He is a past chairman of the Steering Committee for the Computational Learning Theory Conferences (COLT), an Associate Editor for the Journal of Computational Biology, and was an action editor for the journal Machine Learning. He is currently Director of the Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering at UCSC and scientific co-director of the multi-campus Institute for Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedical Research at USCF, UCB and UCSC.

Haussler holds a BA in Mathematics from Connecticut College, an MS in Applied Mathematics from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Eugene W. Myers

Eugene W. Myers Jr., introduced several improved algorithms for sequence comparisons and co-developed the BLAST program for fast, sensitive database searches, which is considered a seminal event in the creation of bio-informatics. He also developed the methodology for assembling genome sequences from short DNA sequences, from which methods for obtaining entire genome sequences from a whole-genome shotgun approach were developed. From 1998 to 2002, he worked for Celera Genomics as director of computational projects leading to the sequencing of the human and other genomes.

Myers joined the faculty of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley at the start of 2003. He was formerly Vice President of Informatics Research at Celera Genomics for four years where he and his team determined the sequences of the Drosophila, Human, and Mouse genomes using the whole genome shotgun technique that he advocated in 1996. Prior to that Gene was on the faculty of the University of Arizona for 18 years and he received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Colorado in 1981.

His research interests include design of algorithms, pattern matching, computer graphics, and computational molecular biology. His most recent academic work has focused on algorithms for the central combinatorial problems involved in DNA sequencing, and on a wide range of sequence and pattern comparison problems. In addition to BLAST, he developed FAKtory, a system to support DNA sequencing projects; Anrep, a pattern matching language for applications in molecular biology; and Mac- and PC-Molecule, a molecular visualization tool for Apple and Wintel computers. He was awarded the IEEE Third Millennium Achievement Award in 2000, the Newcomb Cleveland Best Paper in Science award in 2001, and the ACM Kanellakis Prize in 2002. He was voted the most influential in bioinformatics in 2001 by Genome Technology Magazine and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003.

Kumiyo Nakakoji

Kumiyo Nakakoji is a highly regarded educator and one of a select number of researchers in the world who study how information technologies can be deployed to support creative knowledge work at both the individual and group levels. She is considered a pioneer in Japan, bringing together the computer and cognitive sciences for a new generation of students.

After receiving her bachelor's degree in computer science from Osaka University in Japan, Nakakoji started working for Software Research Associates (SRA) Inc., Japan. Through the company's scholarship, she attended the University of Colorado Boulder, graduating with her computer science master's degree in 1990 and doctorate in 1993. She began her academic career as the cognitive sciences chair at the Graduate School of Information Science at the Nara Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Tokyo, before becoming an adjoint associate professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at CU-Boulder. Nakakoji now is a full professor with the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo and a senior researcher with SRA Key Technology Laboratory, Inc.

She maintains strong ties with the University of Colorado as an ambassador between the Japanese and American professional communities. Nakakoji is an active liaison introducing people and sharing research through workshops and conferences, keynote speeches, and invited university and industry guests. She is credited with influencing researchers in higher education to reexamine how to address research issue, formulate models and approaches, and communicate research outcomes in international settings.

She serves as a member of many doctoral students' review committees in Japan, as well as the University of Colorado, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Oulu, Finland. Nakakoji plays a major role in promoting collaborative research projects involving members of the CU-Boulder Center for LifeLong Learning and Design.

She is the recipient of two prestigious Japanese research fellow awards for young researchers from the Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology (PRESTO) program by the Japan Science and Technology Agency).

Nakakoji's professional community service is extensive. She serves as the program officer for one of the largest funding agencies in Japan, where she is the representative of the Human-Computer Interaction area. She is currently Chair of Special Interest Group on Human Interface at the Information Processing Society of Japan. In 2002 she was awarded the Association for Computing Machinery Recognition Service Award. She is featured in the book How to Be a Scientist, which is published in Japan to encourage high school students to study science.

Adam L. Beguelin

First as an academic researcher and then as a highly inventive entrepreneur, Adam Beguelin has created a substantial number of large and complex software systems. He won the R&D 100 Award in 1994 for the PVM portable parallel programming environment to which he was a major contributor, and he later developed fundamental video search technology that eventually led to the purchase of his start-up company Truveo by AOL.

Beguelin received his bachelor's degree in math and computer science, summa cum laude, from Emory University in 1985, and his master's and PhD in computer science from CU-Boulder in 1988 and 1990, respectively. He then completed post-doctoral positions at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory/University of Tennessee, and joined the faculty of the highly ranked computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. There, he continued to push the frontiers of parallel languages and systems with his distributed object migration environment research system, which also won an award at the 1994 Supercomputing conference.

In 1996, Beguelin was recruited to join Inktomi Corp., where he was an early employee and made substantial contributions to Inktomi's then-dominant web search engine and web caching system. After the company had grown to several hundred employees, had an initial public offering, and increased its share price twenty-fold, Beguelin moved on to a series of other start-ups. He was also a member of the technical staff at Oracle and a software architect at Macrovision. In 2004, he co-founded Truveo, which led a new technology wave in video search with a successful product launch in 2005. He and his partner, Timothy Tuttle, sold Truveo to AOL in December 2005, and Beguelin is now vice president of AOL Video.

Beguelin has been a friend and supporter of the computer science department at CU-Boulder, and has recruited CU students to Oak Ridge, Inktomi, and other organizations where he has been. He was an Association for Computing Machinery national lecturer from 1993 to 1995, and received the Martin Marietta Energy Systems Technical Achievement Award in 1992.

He and his wife, Loan, live in San Carlos, California, with their two children, Jade and Jared.

Pamela A. Drew

Pamela Drew has had a distinguished career as an engineering researcher and a corporate leader, having risen quickly to the top levels of management at Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company. Her technical achievements and leadership contributions are highly regarded, and in less than 10 years she has become a vice president entrusted with billions of dollars of contracts, who has also successfully transitioned many research developments into highly profitable products.

She earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1985, followed by a master's and PhD in computer science in 1987 and 1991, all from CU-Boulder. She pursued her PhD while leading advanced software technology projects in the U.S. West Advanced Technologies group in Boulder for five years. After completing her dissertation, she took a position as an assistant professor at the newly formed Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, while also pursuing various start-up opportunities in the information technology sector.

In 1996, Drew joined Boeing as the manager of applied research in information management and collaborative technologies in the mathematics and computing technology division of Phantom Works, the company's enterprise research and development organization. She was promoted through various positions and was named vice president of engineering and information technology at Phantom Works in 2002.

She is now the vice president and general manager of Integrated Defense and Security Solutions (IDSS), which is part of the Advanced Systems group in Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems business unit. IDSS is among the best in the industry at providing integrated capabilities and solutions for defense, homeland security, and civil and commercial markets. SBInet, the U.S. Custom and Border Protection Agency's program to secure 6,000 miles of the country's northern and southern borders, is one of its most recent business pursuits.

Drew also is active in the international R&D community and was named an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. She serves as a member of the National Academy of Science's Air Force Studies Board as well as the Engineering Advisory Council at CU-Boulder. She also volunteers her time to serve on the board of directors of the Washington State Special Olympics and Tiger Woods Learning Center.

She lives in the Seattle area with her husband, Robert Coggeshall, and their son, Seth. Her brother, Steven, also has a bachelor's degree from CU-Boulder, in electrical engineering.

Evi Nemeth

Evi Nemeth is an internationally recognized engineer, author, and teacher known for her expertise in computer system administration and networks. She co-authored the twin "bibles" of system administration: UNIX Systems Administration Handbook (1989, 1995, 2000) and LINUX Administration Handbook (2001, 2007). At the University of Colorado Boulder, she championed undergraduate students and helped establish strong relationships with industry. Her dedication to CU is further realized in the university's extensive computer connectivity and in the cutting-edge hardware she secured for teaching and research.

As an associate professor of computer science at CU-Boulder from 1980 until her retirement in 2001, Nemeth promoted the early growth and development of computing throughout the campus. She led the timely acquisition of UNIX software, which provided computer support for research and teaching throughout the college, and played a pivotal role in securing the campus' colorado.edu Internet address and organization ID at an early stage, demonstrating her extraordinary vision and leadership. Later, she pioneered the use of the Internet multicast backbone for videoconferencing and for broadcasting scientific and engineering meetings.

Nemeth also has a special talent for inspiring and teaching young people. She mentored numerous middle- and high-school students, who worked with her to support computing in the college and came to be known as "the munchkins." She also mentored talented young undergraduates, taking them to national meetings and working with them on computer installations. She coached the university's student programming teams in the ACM's annual International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Outside the United States, Nemeth has helped bring Internet technology to the developing world through her involvement with programs of the Internet Society and the United Nations Development Programme.

Nemeth received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Penn State in 1961 and her PhD in mathematics from the University of Waterloo, Ontario in 1971. She taught at Florida Atlantic University and the State University of New York before joining the computer science department at CU-Boulder in 1980. She served as manager of the college's computing facility from 1982 to 1986.

Since her retirement, Nemeth has traded mountains for oceans and has sailed from Florida to the Caribbean via the Mediterranean, West Africa, and Brazil on her 40-foot sailboat named Wonderland. She is now in Trinidad in the West Indies and expects to transit the Panama Canal to the Pacific next year. Her son, Laszlo, lives in Boulder.