National Academy of Engineering
Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington College of Engineering
Ed Lazowska holds the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Lazowska received his A.B. from Brown University in 1972 and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1977, when he joined the University of Washington faculty. His research and teaching concern the design, implementation, and analysis of high-performance computing and communication systems. He chaired the Computing Research Association Board of Directors from 1997-2001, the NSF CISE Advisory Committee from 1998-99, and the DARPA Information Science and Technology Study Group from 2004-06. He is a member of the Microsoft Research Technical Advisory Board, and serves as a board member or technical advisor to a number of high-tech companies and venture firms. In 2003 President Bush named him to co-chair the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee; in 2005 President Bush abolished the committee, presumably for insubordination. Lazowska recently became the inaugural chair of the Computing Community Consortium, an NSF-sponsored effort to engage the computing research community in envisioning more audacious research challenges. Lazowska is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2005 Lazowska received the Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award for outstanding service to the computing research community, and the ACM Presidential Award from the Association for Computing Machinery "for showing us how to advocate effectively for IT research and advanced education." Twenty Ph.D. students and twenty-three Masters students have completed their degrees working with him.