Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Corporate Award Winners
In 2002, the College's Foundation Advisory Council initiated a corporate awards program to salute these extraordinary relationships. (To see the 2002 award winners, click here.) Two awards have been created. The Corporate Partners in SolUTions award recognizes companies that provide extraordinary assistance to the College. We realize as well that many exceptional relationships with companies occur because of individuals who serve as our champions within the company. To recognize these personal efforts, we created the Trailblazer award.
Student scholarships and fellowships, faculty chairs, research grants, outreach and education initiatives, student recruiting and internships—these are among the programs made possible by the College’s corporate partners. In making the corporate awards, the Advisory Council considers support of key college initiatives and length of engagement with the College as well as spontaneous, unexpected, and unusual activity that advances the College mission. We are delighted to offer tribute to these invaluable friends.
Corporate Partners in SolUTions Award Winners
IBM – 2003-2004
Advanced Micro Devices – 2002-2003
National Instruments – 2002-2003
Trailblazers Award Winners
Dr. Ann Marie Grizzaffi Maynard, IBM – 2003-2004
Dr. E.N. “Mootaz” Elnozahy, IBM – 2003-2004
Jeff Kodosky, National Instruments – 2002-2003
Corporate Partners in SolUTions Award Winners
• IBM: Outstanding Commitment and Continued Service
IBM is an exceptional supporter of the College of Natural Sciences in numerous ways. The world’s largest information technology company has provided broad-based support to the college over many decades in a relationship that continues to expand.
Since 1975 alone, IBM has provided more than $5.5 million in philanthropic gifts and $3.2 million in research contract support to the college. IBM also fosters college support by providing a gift program where IBM matches employee contributions of up to $5,000 annually per individual.
This in-depth support has permitted the college to expand its support of faculty and student research through project related funds and individual support, to offer scholarships and fellowships, to hold essential workshops and scientific meetings, and to improve research and educational activities
in other ways, such as enhancing buildings or procuring essential equipment.
Most departments in the college have benefited from IBM’s support, as have many of the college’s research units. The areas supported include: biological sciences, chemistry and biochemistry, computer sciences, geological sciences, human ecology, mathematics, physics, the Marine Science
Institute, the McDonald Observatory and the Texas Memorial Museum.
While IBM’s relationship with the college is expansive, it has provided substantive support to the Department of Computer Sciences in particular. For example, about 85 percent of philanthropic gifts have been for the department’s activities. In addition, IBM is a consistent top recruiter of computer sciences students, and has provided internships, co-ops and numerous professional opportunities to computer science students. One such opportunity is student participation in IBM’s prestigious Extreme Blue Summer Internship program, where they participate in leading IBM research projects. IBM also supports student organizations, and some of its investigators teach at university as adjunct faculty.
• Advanced Micro Devices: Strengthening Education, Strengthening Community
Since 1979, Advanced Micro Devices has enriched our local community by promoting innovative solutions to shared community and company needs. By proactively engaging community partners, strategically investing corporate resources, and empowering employees to have a positive impact on their communities, AMD seeks to make a difference in Central Texas every day.
Just as AMD is determined to succeed in its core businesses, the company is also determined to help others succeed. They believe they can have a greater impact on communities by targeting corporate investments in two global focus areas: Strengthening Education and Strengthening Community.
AMD’s partnership with the UT College of Natural Sciences and Austin Science Fun Day is just one example of how the company strives to strengthen education by making science fun and relevant to young people.
• National Instruments: Getting Involved Through Volunteer and Employee Sharing
National Instruments was founded in 1976 by a trio of research scientists who met at the University of Texas. With its early roots in education, NI celebrates opportunities to help enrich local education and the arts through various UT colleges and the Performing Arts Center. For several years, NI has showcased student success with mechanical engineering and computer programming projects — a result of the NI corporate ROBOLAB Volunteer Program — at Austin Science Fun Day. Recently, NI alumni from the College of Natural Sciences collaborated to create an endowment. The National Instruments Endowed Scholarship for Excellence will henceforth be awarded to undergraduate students in Natural Sciences with majors in disciplines related to NI’s research interests. To expedite the first award, NI made an advance gift and awarded the first scholarship in September of 2002.
These collaborations are examples of National Instruments Getting Involved through Volunteer and Employee Sharing - NI GIVES. Through NI GIVES, NI and its employees help educate and mentor the next generation of engineers, support the arts and critical health and human service needs in the community, and fulfill the corporate mission to improve everyday life.
Trailblazer Award Winners
• Dr. Ann Marie Grizzaffi Maynard, a Trailblazer in Advancing the College of Natural Sciences
Dr. Ann Marie Grizzaffi Maynard has been a tireless advocate for advancing research efforts at the university through her leadership of IBM’s Austin Center for Advanced Studies. She directs the center in the Austin Research Laboratory, which links IBM mentors to faculty and students at the university pursuing challenging technology projects that have realworld applications. Maynard has expanded research interactions between faculty in the college’s Department of Computer Sciences and IBM as the center’s director, and has obtained fellowship and research project support from major IBM divisions to help more than 20 computer science faculty and 20 graduate students receive annual research funding of $25,000 or more.
Maynard, a senior engineer in IBM-Austin Development, is a dedicated scientist herself. She co-chaired the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Inc.Workshop on Workload Characterization for three years, has co-edited two books on workload characterization, and has received numerous IBM research awards, including: a 1999 First Patent Application Invention Achievement Award, a 1995 Technical Author Recognition Award, and the 1994 Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for RS/6000 Memory Subsystem Analysis.
An expert on memory subsystem performance, Maynard studies analytic modeling, full system and trace-driven simulation, workload characterization, and system-level hardware performance analysis of future system designs for commercial markets. She obtained a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992, and was a scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories and at NASA Langley Research Center before joining IBM.
• Dr. E.N. “Mootaz” Elnozahy, a Trailblazer in Advancing the College of Natural Sciences
Dr. E.N. “Mootaz” Elnozahy has been a driving force in building relationships between IBM’s Austin Research Laboratory and the college’s Department of Computer Sciences. He instructs students at the university as an adjunct associate professor, and has fostered relationships as a senior manager and master inventor at IBM. For example, he is involved in TRIPS, a project to develop a computing system that will outperform conventional architectures on a wide range of applications.
This project is part of his IBM leadership role of researching future system architectures under the federally funded High Productivity Computing Systems initiative. Elnozahy also investigates distributed systems, operating systems, and fault tolerance, and has published more than 25
articles and obtained 12 patents for his research efforts. In addition, he has consulted for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the state of Texas and has served on 19 technical program committees about distributed operating systems and reliability.
He obtained a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Cairo University, and a master’s and doctorate in computer science from Rice University. From 1993 to 1997, Elnozahy was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, where he received an NSF CAREER award. He joined the IBM Austin Research Laboratory in 1997, and started the Systems Software Department that he leads. He also is an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, and the program committee chair for Dependable Systems and Networks-2004.
• Jeff Kodosky, a Trailblazer in Advancing the College of Natural Sciences
Entrepreneur, scientist, philanthropist, friend: Mr. Jeff Kodosky is singular in his unwavering dedication to the College of Natural Sciences. For these reasons, the College’s Advisory Council Foundation is delighted to give its first Trailblazer award to Mr. Kodosky, Co-Founder of National
Instruments and an NI Business and Technology Fellow. As a graduate of the College, he shows diligence in fostering better relations between National Instruments and the College. He has cultivated a rich, long-standing relationship between National Instruments and Natural Sciences and has championed several College initiatives inside the corporation.
His vision and leadership established the corporation- and employee-funded National
Instruments Endowed Scholarship for Excellence. The endowment will award scholarships to meritorious undergraduate students in the College of Natural Sciences whose major in Computer Sciences, Mathematics, or Physics aligns their talents with National Instruments’ core business focus in computing and measurement equipment.
The endowment campaign, initiated in March 2002, gained the support of 25 National Instruments employees, many of whom are Natural Sciences alumni. National Instruments matched each donation with corporate funds. Mr. Kodosky not only organized this successful campaign, he made it possible to award the first NI scholarship – in advance of the full endowment funding – by extending a personal gift.
