Conference / Award Ceremony
The 1999 ACM SIGMOBILE award for Outstanding Contributions to Research on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data, and Computing
went to Dr. Mark D. Weiser, the Chief Technology Officer of Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC). The award was given in recognition of Dr. Weiser's
numerous contributions and visionary leadership in the field of Ubiquitous
Computing.
This award is given by ACM SIGMOBILE to recognize an individual who has made significant and lasting contribution to the research on mobile communications and wireless networking. The contribution can be a single event or a life-time of achievement.
Principal Nominating Statement for Dr. Mark D. Weiser
Principal Nominator:Prof. Randy H. Katz
United Microelectronics Corporation Distinguished Professor and Chair
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1770
E-mail: randy
@cs.Berkeley.edu
Nominators:
Dr. Roy Want
Area Manager, Embedded Systems
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
3333 Coyote Hill Rd.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
E-mail: want@parc.xerox.com
Dr. Victor Bahl
Systems and Networking Research Group
Microsoft Research
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
E-mail: bahl@microsoft.com
Prof. Leonard Kleinrock
Computer Science Department
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1596
E-mail: lk@cs.ucla.edu
Prof. David B. Johnson
Computer Science Department
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburg, PA 15213-3891
E-mail: dbj@cs.cmu.edu
Mark Weiser
is a true visionary and leader of mobile computing, and is the most deserving
individual for receiving the SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award this
year. His contributions to the field are legion, and his recognition by the
research community is long overdue.
Mark was the first computer science researcher to see the opportunities for computer science to make significant contributions in mobile computing. He coined the term "ubiquitous computing" to describe an environment of pervasive computing devices interconnected via wireless networks. His papers on ubiquitous computing, in particular, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, Vol. 265, No. 3, (September 1991), pp. 94-104, and "Some Computer Science Issues in Ubiquitous Computing," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 36, No. 7, (July 1993), pp. 75-84, are true classics of the field. They are required reading for anyone entering the field.
Through his inspiring technical vision, effective evangelism, and strong leadership, he inspired an entire generation of computer scientists to tackle the hardest problems of mobile computing and wireless networking. He lead the renaissance of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, remaking it as a world leading center in the mobile computing field. In the grandest tradition of PARC, he led a large team of researchers in the design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation of several generations of leading mobile computing technologies and systems.
His impact went far beyond Xerox PARC. For example, he has been a valued participant in the research retreats of a large number of projects at Berkeley, from RAID to IRAM. He has been a friendly and constructive critic, and a committed mentor to many more junior researchers and graduate students.
For his outstanding and sustained contributions and leadership in the field of mobile computing, Mark Weiser is the most qualified candidate to receive the 1999 SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award.
Mark D. Weiser
July 23, 1952 - April 27, 1999
Biography
Dr. Mark Weiser, Chief Technology Officer at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), was best known for his contributions to the field of mobile computing. He was often referred to as the father of "ubiquitous computing". He coined that term in 1988 to describe a future in which PCs will be replaced with invisible computers embedded in everyday objects. He believed that this will lead to an era of "calm technology," in which technology, rather than panicking us, will help us focus on what is really important to us.
Other research interests included garbage collection, operating systems and user interface design. Dr. Weiser, who held several U.S. and foreign patents, wrote or co-wrote more than 75 technical publications on such subjects as the psychology of programming, program slicing, operating systems, programming environments, garbage collection and technological ethics. He taught graduate and undergraduate courses on human factors, systems, and programming. He was a popular speaker at scientific symposia and conferences, and a frequent subject of media interviews.
Dr. Weiser, who founded three companies, was the drummer with rock band Severe Tire Damage, the first band to perform live on the Internet. He was born on July 23rd, 1952 in Chicago, Illinois. He was married with two children. The following are highlights of his career accomplishments. For more details, please see http://www.ubiq.com/weiser/.
Accomplishments
| 1999 | Recipient the of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to mobile computing |
| Chief Technology Officer, Xerox PARC | |
| Dec., 1995 | Program Chair for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fifteenth Symposium on Operating System Principles (SOSP) |
| June, 1993 | Severe Tire Damage became the first band to broadcast live video and audio worldwide on the Internet. |
| 1993 | ACM & IEEE, International Conference on Software Engineering "Best Paper Ten Years Later" award for "Program Slicing." |
| 1992-1994 | Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering |
| 1992-1994 | Elected to board of the Computer Research Association. Founder of the CRA series of annual conferences for heads of industrial computer science research laboratories. |
| Seminal article, The Computer of the 21st Century, appeared in "Scientific American" magazine. It remains essential reading for people entering the field. | |
| 1988-1995 | Manager of the Computer Science Laboratory, Xerox PARC |
| 1988 | Became Principal Scientist, Xerox PARC |
| 1987 | Joined Xerox PARC as Member of Research Staff |
| 1979-1987 | C.S. Dept., University of Maryland (Associate Chairman, 1986-1987) |
| 1979 | Received Ph.D. from University of Michigan, Computer and Communication Sciences |
| 1976 | Received M.S. from University of Michigan, Computer and Communication Sciences |
| 1973-1976 | Co-founder and President, Cerberus Inc., Ann Arbor, MI |
Other activities
- Principal Investigator on grants and contracts with ARPA, AFOSR, NSF, and NASA.
- Professional Societies: Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE Computer Society, AAAS.
- Reviewer of papers and proposals for International Conference on Software Engineering, IEEE, Transactions on Software Engineering, Journal of Systems and Software, National Science Foundation, Communications of the ACM, Software-Practice & Experience, Acta Informatica, IEEE Software, and others.
- Public Software: PCR - AutoTetris - game for Sun workstations, 1992; Portable Common Runtime system providing threads, garbage collection, I/O and symbol table management for multiple languages and operating systems, 1989; SDI - game for Sun workstations, 1987.
Publications (partial list):
Dan Russell and Mark Weiser. "The Future of Integrated Design of Ubiquitous Computing in Combined Real and Virtual Worlds." Proceedings CHI-98, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 275-276, 1998.Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown. "Center and Periphery: Balancing the Bias of Digital Technology," Blueprint for the Digital Economy, pp 317-335, Edited by Don Tapscott, McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown. "Riding on a Sea of Calm", World Link, pp 48-50, January/February 1998
Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown. "Designing Calm Technology" , PowerGrid Journal, v 1.01, http://powergrid.electriciti.com , July 1996. Also appeared as Chaper 6 - "The Coming Age of Calm Technogy" in the book "Beyond Calculation - The Next Fifty Years of Computing" by Peter J. Denning and Robert M. Metcalfe, Copernicus/An Imprint of Springer-Verlag.
Mark Weiser. "Open House," Review, the web magazine of the Interactive Telecommunications Program of New York University. March 1996,
Roy Want, Bill Schilit, Norman Adams, Rich Gold, David Goldberg, Karin. Petersen, John Ellis and Mark Weiser. "An Overview of the Parctab Ubiquitous Computing Experiment," IEEE Personal Communications, December 1995, Vol 2. No.6, pp28-43
Mark Weiser and Andy Garman. "Bleeding Edge Technology -- From Lab Coats to Market Caps," Red Herring, August 1995
Mark Weiser. "The Technologist's Responsibilities and Social Change," Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, V2N4. April 1, 1995
Mark Weiser, Alan Demers, Brent Welch, Scott Shenker. "Scheduling for Reduced CPU Energy", Operating System Design and Implementation (OSDI) Conference, Monterey, CA. November, 1994
Vicky Reich and Mark Weiser. "Libraries are More than Information: Situational Aspects of Electronic Libraries," CSL Technical Report 93-21, June 1994. also Serials Review, 1994, V20N3, pp. 31-38.
Mark Weiser. "The World is not a Desktop," Interactions; January 1994; pp. 7-8
Christopher A. Kantarjiev and Alan Demers and Ron Frederick and Robert T. Krivacic and Mark Weiser. "Experiences with X in a Wireless Environment," Proceedings USENIX Symposium on Mobile & Location-Independent Computing, August 1993.
Mark Weiser, "Some Computer Science Problems in Ubiquitous Computing," Communications of the ACM, July 1993. (reprinted as "Ubiquitous Computing". Nikkei Electronics; December 6, 1993)
Mark Weiser, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, September 1991
Mark Weiser. Alan Demers, and Carl Hauser, "The Portable Common Runtime Approach to Interoperability," ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, December 1989
Hans Boehm and Mark Weiser. "Garbage Collection in an Uncooperative Environment," Software: Practice and Experience, September 1988
Glenn Pearson and Mark Weiser. "Exploratory Evaluations of Two Versions of a Foot-Operated Cursor-Positioning Device in a Target Selection Task," Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 88, May 1988
Jack Callahan, Don Hopkins, Mark Weiser, and Ben Shneiderman. "Experiments with Pie Menus," Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 88, May 1988
Mark Weiser. "Program slicing," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. SE-10, no. 4, July 1984
Mark Weiser and Chris Torek. "The Maryland Window System," Proceedings of the 1984 Unix Users (Usenix) Conference, pp. 166-172, Salt Lake City, Utah, June, 1984